The Spears of Laconia
Sam Sisavath
BOOK ONE
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REST YOUR WEARY HEAD
CHAPTER 1
FRANK
“You can’t win.”
He ignored the voice. It had become easier with time, and like everything else about his new existence — this thing he called life after death (Re-life?)—it was about balancing acceptance with resistance, trying to hold onto the past while not neglecting the present. Because the here and now was where the danger lurked; it was also here that the answer to the future was within his grasp.
“You must know that by now. After all you’ve seen, all you’ve learned.”
There was something odd about the voice these last few weeks, a guarded hesitation that hadn’t been there when it first spoke to him in the early days. It wasn’t fear — no, he wouldn’t go that far — but it didn’t sound nearly as certain as it once had been, either.
“She understood. Why did you think she came over? She opened the door, remember?”
Yes, he remembered. Kate had opened the door, dooming them. Almost.
Whatever happened to Kate?
Oh, that’s right. He had killed her, that night outside the gas station. How long ago now? He couldn’t remember at the moment, but it would come to him. It always did, eventually.
“Talk to me.”
It was growing annoyed, the warning tone of a parent cajoling an uncooperative child while at the same time letting him know that it was losing patience. It wanted him to respond, because that was how it would track him. It had taken him a long time to learn how to erect the barrier inside his mind. But he had adapted. He always did.
Letters. An acronym. SE…something.
Memories came and went, sometimes garbled, other times clear as the crystal blue of her eyes, the glint of the sun against her blonde hair.
It helped to think of her. To concentrate on the smoothness of her skin. He longed to touch her again, to press against and taste her lips…
“Whatever it takes,” he had said, “whatever happens, you won’t have to face another night alone.”
He’d said that to her, one of many unkept promises that haunted his nights and terrorized his days. He’d failed her then, but he could make up for it. He could save her; save everyone.
And all they had to do was find him.
Mabry.
He was the key. The beginning and the end. He was the voice in all their heads. In his head.
Mabry was the one constant. He was the eternal. Everywhere, and nowhere.
“I’ll find you,” Mabry said to him now inside his head. “You can’t run forever.”
He focused on the surrounding blackness, on the things that moved and thrived within the endless folds of darkness that he wouldn’t have been able to see before. They were out there, swarms of them, clear as day — even though he had forgotten what day looked like, or the warmth of the sun against his skin.
They had been on his trail for months now, but their pursuit had increased in intensity in just the last few weeks. It was as if Mabry knew what he was trying to do. Was that possible? Were there holes in his barrier that he hadn’t detected? Was Mabry burrowing around inside his mind this very second?
No. He couldn’t afford this right now, because doubt was the enemy. He had to forge ahead, follow the original plan, because there was no victory without a plan…Z?
It came from somewhere in the recesses of his mind, deep, deep down in that place where pieces of his past slumbered, waiting to be resurrected.
Something about plans. Letters. A through Z…
He shook the jumbled thoughts away. It would come to him later.
Back to the present. Back to the now.
He could smell them all the way up here, the stench of their existence carried upward by the breeze that washed across all the rooftops from the ocean beyond the city limits. He could almost taste it, the bitter salt water against the tip of his tongue, sending strange sensations (fear?) through every inch of his body.
Their dark shapes vanished and reappeared out of office buildings, stores, and apartments. They were little more than tiny dots, like insignificant ants against the moonlit night. He had higher ground and could glimpse the entire city from up here. Safe on his perch, though he knew very well he would never be entirely safe. None of them were, so long as he was out there.
Mabry.
He was the key. The everything and the nothing, the beginning and the end; at once nowhere, and everywhere…
A soft click as the man came out of the rooftop access door and moved across the gravel floor toward him. The attempt at stealth was laudable, but he might as well be dropping firecrackers with every footstep. That, and the aroma of medical ointment over old wounds was impossible to ignore.
The rustling of a thick jacket as the man lay down on his stomach next to him and peered off the edge of the rooftop with a pair of night-vision binoculars. Mist formed in front of his partly covered face with every word, the taste of beef jerky still lingering on his lips even though the man probably couldn’t smell it.
But he could smell it just fine, just as he could hear conversations multiple floors below or above him, or feel the rough or smooth texture of things without touching them. Everything was hyper-realized, all his senses razor sharp. They were the gifts that came with the curse, that made him more than what he was, though he would forego them all without hesitation if it meant he could be what he once was.
“Can you see them?” the man asked. “They were supposed to have arrived by now.”
“No,” he hissed.
He hated having to talk, hated the noise that came out with every single word. They were just another reminder of what he was. As a result, he tried to say as little as possible, which was difficult because communication with the man was necessary.
“Can you see that far?” the man asked.
“No.”
“I thought you had super everything. I guess laser beams are out of the question, huh?”
He didn’t bother to answer that one.
“You ever get cold?” the man asked.
“No.”
“I guess you wouldn’t. Being both hot and cold. How does that even work, anyway?”
“I don’t know.”
“You ever think about it?”
“No.”
It was a lie. He often thought about what the transformation had done to him, but it always ended in frustration. He knew that it did things to him at a cellular level, but the details were beyond his understanding. He was a grunt before, and he was one now. Maybe she would know. Maybe he could ask her when he finally saw her again.
The man adjusted his position, his clothes scratching against the rooftop. “Looks like a party down there. How many?”
“Too many.”
“How the hell do they keep finding us?”
“I don’t know.”
“You?”
“Maybe.”
“Or us?”
“Maybe…”
The man pushed himself up into a sitting position, then opened a pouch along his cargo pants and took out an almost empty bag of beef jerky. He pulled out a stick and chewed (too loud) on it for a moment.
The stink of preserved meat made his nostrils twitch and reminded him that he no longer yearned for food as he once had. There was enough blood (Mabry’s) flowing through him that he could survive for months, maybe even years. When he did thirst, it was easily satisfied with animal blood. Two cows in Louisiana, a pair of horses in Texas…