The Man Who Can't Die

Running was pointless, he realized now, but his legs kept moving, one great step before the other. He was literally flying over the asphalt, his toes barely touching the ground as he ran as fast as he could. And he was fast. Leaves lifted off the ground as he passed through them in a park, newspapers were yanked off pedestrian’s hands, puddles exploded in sprays as his feet made contact with them.

Several times he fell, each time harder than the last. He was bruised and bleeding and beginning to tire. Still, he kept running. He wondered how long he could keep himself alive until he managed to get help.

***

Patrick, the night manager, looked up from his magazine as the bell hanging over the store’s door tingled.

A young man entered. He was dripping blood.

His face was a mess of holes, and his right eye was a gaping red gash. His torso was no better; a rough diagonal line of bullet holes trailed from his right shoulder down to the left side of his pelvis.

If this was real, Patrick thought to himself, there is no way that man could still be alive.

But alive, the man was. In fact, he seemed not to notice that his brains were spilling out of the bullet hole on his forehead. He approached Patrick, placing his bloody hands on the counter.

“Hi,” the bloody man said cheerfully. His voice sounded in the most normal way possible. He didn’t whisper in a hoarse, mysterious fashion and his voice didn’t rattle, contrary to what Patrick expected. If the man wasn’t bleeding in the head, he would have been just any other customer.

“I was wondering if you sold any shirts. I would look myself, but well, my right eye isn’t exactly serviceable at the moment.” His fingers fluttered awkwardly over his bloody face.

Patrick’s eyes were wide, unable to look away from the dripping holes on the man’s face. There were two on his forehead, and the rest were scattered on his cheeks and his right eye.

“Hello?” the bleeding man snapped his red fingers at Patrick’s nose, splattering his face with blood. “You got shirts? I really need a fresh one like, now.”

“Dude, what happened to you?” the cashier stammered.

The man rolled his eye.

“I obviously got shot,” he said dryly. “Shirts?”

Patrick slipped out from behind the counter and searched the aisles. When he came back, he carried with him medium and large plain white shirts.

He handed them to the man, who carefully received them with bloodied hands. They were wrapped in plastic, at least. The bloody man picked the medium-sized shirt.

“Shouldn’t you be going to a hospital?” Patrick stammered as the man headed for the bathroom.

“I would, but that would be a complete waste of my time,” the man said, closing the door.

***

Victor Seven was tempted to stop, to see if he’s managed to put any distance between him and his assailant. When he reached an alleyway, he slipped into it, and waited.

In the silence, panicked thoughts came back with renewed force. Never in his life has any of his hits stood up after he emptied an entire clip on their chests. He saw the blood spew out of the poor bastard’s body, saw him slump on the floor of his apartment. How the hell could he still be alive?

***

The man came out fresh-looking. And Patrick’s eyes widened farther than earlier. His customer did not have any bullet holes gaping in his face. He was not bleeding. And the shirt did not even have the slightest stain in it. Patrick noticed for the first time the young man’s blond hair, and blue eyes. He was tall, too, and lean-muscled, like a swimmer.

“How much do I owe you?” the man asked warmly. He seemed even more cheerful than earlier.

Patrick stammered the price.

“Dude,” he added as the man pulled out a wallet. “Your face. It’s…healed.”

The man looked up at him.

“Oh, right,” he said, nodding. “Lucky, eh? It’s thanks to those Vitamin Cs and B12s I’ve been taking.”

He slapped some crisp bills on Patrick’s hands, and left the cashier wide-eyed, frozen, and dripping with musty urine.

***

He still hasn’t been able to contact headquarters, to call for backup. It was unheard of the higher-ups to make such a mistake of assigning him to off a man who, apparently, could not die. The dossier file he’d studied revealed his mark to be a twenty-two-year-old bachelor living in a half-decent apartment. The reason why the organization wanted him dead was not given, as was always the case. He was an assassin after all. His actions were based from the dossier file and his mark’s routine movements. Kill the moment the target was alone and within sights.

The mark lived alone, had no records of owning weapons or knowledge in hand-to-hand combat. This was supposed to be easy.

Victor had disguised himself as a pizza delivery man, and had casually knocked on the man’s door. The moment it opened, he had emptied his gun at the man’s general heart area. The mark fell down, dead before he even hit the floor. Or so he thought.

He could remember the ticklish laughter that emanated from the fallen man.

The very same laughter he could hear coming closer.

He is here.

Victor fumbled for a third clip and snapped it on his double eagle. The second clip had been emptied to the man’s head, when he had gotten up earlier. Victor saw the man’s head explode in the flurry of bullets, saw his eye got put out. That time, the man didn’t even fall. And he said two very intriguing words: “Another one?”

In a panic, Victor decided to run. It was rare for him to fail an assassination, especially since it was a pointblank killing. If he did commit mistakes, they usually involved ‘missing’ and not ‘resurrection’. He was riding the wind before he could even stop himself. Which was good, since two seconds after he bolted, bullets zinged after him, one of them catching him the shoulder.

Victor Seven cupped a hand over his bleeding shoulder, trying to concentrate on something else other than the pain. The tap-tap-tapping of the mark’s footstep seemed like a good thing to focus on. It was getting close.

“Seven,” the man’s voice resonated in the narrow alley. “It’s pointless to go on running. Eventually, you will die. Whether by my hands or time’s. So save us both the trouble and come forward. Let me end your life with your dignity intact…more or less.”

“Who are you?” Victor managed to shout. He was hidden behind a dumpster and had a slightly obscured view of the man coming towards him. “What are you?”

“Me?” the man asked, now purposefully moving towards Victor’s voice. “Call me Andy. Its not my real name, of course, just as Victor Seven isn’t.”

“What are you talking about?” Victor gasped in pain as he leaned on his shoulder too heavily. “Victor Seven is my real name.”

“Save it, Seven,” Andy said. “You and I both know you work for an erasing organization. And that you are a fulltime assassin.”

“I dunno anything about that!” Victor said. He may just die tonight, but he sure as hell wouldn’t be betraying the organization’s secrecy to this prick.

He could see his assassin clearly now. And his appearance surprised him. He was wearing a clean white shirt, and there was not a drop of blood on him. His face looked completely as it had before he emptied his gun at it; handsome, tanned, and chiseled.

“Ah, so noble,” Andy applauded. “Remaining loyal to the organization, when the organization itself has betrayed you.”

“What?” Victor hissed.

“I guess I can answer your second question now,” Andy said. “As to what I am, I am an Eraser, just like you. But I don’t just erase anyone. I erase assassins. Like you.”

Victor’s head was swimming from agony. It was as though there were pain enhancers imbibed in the bullet that hit him.

“The organization we both work for sent you to my apartment to be erased, like many others before you,” Andy said conversationally. “Who better to erase highly skilled killers than someone who can’t be killed?”

“You expect me to believe that bullshit?” Victor challenged. “Why would the organization want me dead? I’ve served them with utmost loyalty and competence the entire time!”

“I don’t know,” Andy admitted. “Like you, my job description does not include questioning the reason behind the job. I simply deliver. But I can tell you this; most of the ones that get sent to me have a record of at least ten failed assassinations. Does that help?”

Shit. Victor tried to count his failed missions in his head, which was difficult while you were in pain. In the end, he realized that he indeed had exactly ten failed assassinations.”

“So this is punishment for not doing a good job?” Victor cried out, disbelieving that the organization he’d considered as the epicenter of his life could betray him like this.

“Punishment?” Andy laughed. “No. If it was, you’d be learning lesson, and you’ll come out of it alive. You won’t come out of this alive, I can assure you.”

Fuck it! Victor said. He reached into the pouch hidden at his back.

“So, how come I can’t kill you?”

Andy shrugged. He was now leaning against the opposite side of the dumpster Victor was hiding behind of.

“That’s simple,” he said. “I can’t die.”

“What, like a vampire?” Victor placed a batch of C7 beside him; on his hand was its detonator.

“Funny,” Andy said, coming ever closer. “Vampires can die. And they don’t exist.”

***

Andy jumped over the entire length of the dumpster and landed on empty asphalt. Victor had disappeared; only his pooled-up blood remained. Stubborn idiot, Andy thought amusedly. While he liked it when his marks were good runners, it did bore him eventually. And he was missing an episode of House MD with all this running around.

“They don’t exist?” a voice from the distance said. Victor.

Andy turned. Victor was standing outside the alley, across the street, holding something in his hand.

“In two seconds, neither will you.”

Victor rammed his thumb on the red button.

The explosion that followed seconds later sent a wave of hot air, along with chunks of flesh, of metal, and of garbage. The buildings making the alley shook, and several windows fell off their panes and landed on the pavement, shattering upon contact. On the street outside the alley, the shockwave caused the traffic lights to act up, creating a traffic jam a mile long.

It was short lived. Explosions never liked to linger. They were here one moment, and gone the next, leaving a nasty mess for the clean-up crew to deal with.

People began to gather, shrieking when they realized they were prodding at a man’s exploded hand, or brains.

***

Victor stood transfixed, detonator in hand, as he stared blankly at the crowd. Their presence barely registered in his head. All he could think of was that he survived. He had killed an unkillable man.

Maybe his superiors will forgive him after they find out that he had successfully erased an immortal punk.

Victor found himself thinking of retiring. He was getting tired, physically. He loved his job, but his age was catching up to him. At age forty, he was already feeling pains in places he didn’t even know existed. Perhaps, after this, he would visit his doctor, see how far the damage had gone…With the money he’d earned from his successful jobs, it wouldn’t be a problem if the doctors found some kind of sickness in him.

Yes. He could retire. He’s earned enough money to last him four lifetimes. Maybe he could get a new woman, and hope for a son. He wanted to have a child, preferably a boy, so he could teach him how to shoot with a gun. If it was a girl, he wouldn’t have it in him to destroy her delicateness with the callous edges of a gun. But he’d be happy nonetheless.

He breathed the night air in. The smell of explosives flooded his lungs. It smelled beautiful.

***

His blond hair was matted to his scalp. He was beginning to tire. Bored, really, but also tired. He sucked on his cigarette and blew the smoke out through his nose.

“Victor, Victor, Victor,” he sighed. “I’ve told you. I can’t die.”

He held on one hand a snub-nosed revolver. It had a custom-made pearl grip, especially designed for his taste. There were three bullets left inside, the first three spent on shooting Victor earlier. At least he had been rewarded with an injured shoulder. He sighed. These other three will enter Victor’s skull very soon, Andy knew. In all honesty, all he needed was one shot, but you can never be too sure.

He straightened, flattened his spent cigarette beneath his sneakers, and began walking. With the gun held nonchalantly on his right hand, his left hand skillfully tied his long hair in a neat ponytail.

In the dark of the night, only two minutes after the huge explosion that shook tenements all over downtown, a single gunshot followed. Its sharp crack echoed in the silence. If one listened closely enough, there had been a surprised gasp before the shot, and then a soft thud.