Project Lazarus (6 page)

“I was sent to do surveillance on the Amazon man.  I watched him day and night.  He stared at me a lot with wild red eyes.  I wasn’t in the room when he raised the man from the dead.  But I was in the line of fire.  You see, they wanted to clean up all the evidence of their dirty deed.  They wanted to kill everyone who knew about Project Lazarus.”

“Project Lazarus?”

“Appropriate huh?” He sneered.

“Yes, so they killed you.”

“Yeah, the guard came down the hall and methodically knocked us off one by one.  I heard shot after shot and by the time he got to me it was too late.  The bullet ripped right though me.  This guy was a cleaner, he aimed only for the heart.  He didn’t miss.  It was too late to pull a weapon.  The bullet killed me Gardenia, I know it did.  But when the Amazon man raised the man in the room I think something unexpected happened.  You see, after I got up from the ground, I could feel the bullet hole,” he pulled back his military jacket to show the blood and the hole in his shirt.

Gardenia winced.

“”I watched every other man shot that day get up.  I don’t know where they went.  I just ran out of there.  I hid out for a long time.  I was completely off the grid.  My intensive CIA training came in handy.  I was invisible.”

“I’m so sorry Travis,” Gardenia said, listening to the story.

“Then I came here.  I didn’t have anywhere else to go.  They’re probably looking for me Gardenia.  And I’m going to leave now.  I needed to see you again.”

He started for the door.

“Wait,” Gardenia rushed to him, “let me help you.  We can sort this out together.”

“No, you were right,” he paused softly to look into her eyes, “I’m not supposed to be here.  I should be dead.  This can’t be.  I don’t want them to find you.”

He reached out to hug her and she reluctantly let go.

“You know it’s the right thing.”

She nodded.

“They’ll be coming for me,” he told her.

“And when they do?”  She asked.

“I don’t think I’ll be alone.  Gardenia, there are more of us.  So many of us.”

She stared at him in horror.  Those words “So many of us.”  How could it be?  Had the Amazon man raised all the dead in Cotter?  Oh God, no.

He turned around away from her, so he wouldn’t have to look her in the eyes when he said goodbye.

Gardenia closed the door behind him.  They were going to hunt him down like a dog.  And in her heart, she knew it was the right thing to do.  They may have killed him for the wrong reasons.  But now they had no choice.  This time they would kill him for the right reasons. 

She turned around, her back to the door and collapsed to the floor.  He wasn’t human anymore.  He was a man awake from the dead.

Project Lazarus was a success.  A disaster.  It also was the death of her only close friend.  He was in her soul.  And now she was just a lonely soul.  He was a dead soul walking around with nowhere to go.

She sobbed into her hands.  She knew it would be best if they found him and not her.

Being helpless wasn’t her strong suit.  She grabbed her coat and flew out of apartment 9 at the Golden Break Bridge Complex.  If Travis was out there, maybe she could find him first.  No, that was the wrong thing to do.  Maybe she could find him after he died again and help him to the other side.  God was that possible?  Wait a minute what about God?  Where was he in all this?  Did this finally end her debate about faith with God?  Or had this simply answered her faith?

For a moment, heading down the stairs, she thought about the miracle of seeing Travis Hill one more time.  A miracle of God.  The smile quickly washed off her porcelain face.  This was no miracle.  It was evil.  She wanted to find Travis.  But she needed to find the Amazon man first.

Amanda Cole woke up in a quarry.  Her jeans bloody, her plaid check red and black shirt stained with blood too.

She ran her fingers through her hair, blood there too, matted.  It was a gruesome ugly scene but her death was much the same.

She climbed up from the hole she dug herself out of, her hands clawing at the dry dirt, almost clay-like.  She definitely looked like something out of a horror movie.

Her killer left her callously in that shallow grave over two years ago, when he killed her.  When Jake Mustarn killed her.  Yes, that was his name.  Somehow, it burnished through her very alive mind now.

Jake Mustam.  Jake Mustam.  Jake Mustam.  The name kept whirling through her mind like a broken record.  She was tuned into some odd radio station.  And that station demanded its listener for revenge.

Crawling now through the wet grass, her legs unable,  unwilling or unknowing how to walk.  She took it slow.  Using her hands, as anchors, she lifted her body slowly through the weeds and grass until she was upright.  Walking.

This was deserted forest.  This was unfamiliar territory.  All of it.  Her mind focused back on that radio station and it kept playing….Jake Mustam.

A stream of consciousness fought her unconsciousness.  It begged for her attention.  She was dead.  She was alive.  She was gone.  She was back.  She wanted it all at once- the peace of death and the redemption of living.

She fell to the ground, grasping her head, which felt like an ever tightening noose gripping around her.  She rested in the grass.  How did she get there?  She couldn’t remember.

Oh yes, she woke up from being buried alive.  No, she was buried dead.  The facts were a blur.  She was alive again.

She got up with a new fervor for the living part of her.  Jake Mustam was on her mind again.

She had to find him.  He was the one that left her there to die in that handmade grave.  He left her all alone.  He knew why.  She knew too.  But that wasn’t important.  All that mattered now was the song playing on the radio.  It was telling her to kill him.  Kill Jake Mustam.  Exact her revenge.  Kill the man that killed you.

But how?  She was out in the forest without a weapon.  The idea came to her.   She collected a nearby branch that had fallen from one of the trees.  She looked up there was nothing but blue sky.  What was that to her?  What was that notion of killing?  Was she like that before?  She didn’t think so.  Where did she go?  When did she come back from?  Why did she return as a killer?  It was a strange string of questions and a heated argument she pursued  in her head.

Jake Mustam.  She held the branch in her hand, claw like nails extended from her lanky fingers. She was normal, herself, but some of the characteristics of the dead stayed with her.  The nails and hair, filled with protein keep growing, even after death.  Her hair, still in a ponytail was to her waist and her once short and neat violin playing manicured nails were perfect tools, long and sharp.  Would they return back to normal soon like the rest of her?

She couldn’t risk it.  Instantly, she knew what those nails were for.  They were for brandishing a weapon.  She clawed and scraped at that branch for hours.  Her mind possessed with the idea of killing Jake Mustam, she worked the branch into a fine point.  She scratched vigorously with her nails until she made a fine point.

She studied it.  Her eyes in awe, she was never this clever when she was alive.  No, she was innocent and trusting.  She believed in people.  She was honest.

She twirled the weapon in her hands and tested the fine point with her finger.  Fresh blood spilled out.  She smiled, in a wicked way that was so foreign to her, it felt as if, she had traveled to another world and returned to find herself as someone new.

Confident, assured, no longer the door mat everyone had taken for her, she was pleased.  She watched the blood gushing from her finger as the object dug in deeper, her psyche widened with a force she immediately recognized as power and knowledge.

She would poke his eyes out first.

Her compass was unforgiving, like an internal GPS system in her head, it led her straight to Jake Mustam’s home.

She burst through the door like a possessed robot warrior.

“You murdered me,” she screamed, “come out and face me now Jake Mustam.  It’s Amanda Cole, Jake.  You murdered me.”

Empty silence answered her voice.  Echoes rang out in the still of night.  Nearby houses began turning off lights. No one wants to know trouble when it comes knocking.  Neighbors never hear or see anything and these days they won’t open the door to help you when you’re running and crying for your life.  Somehow, even though she disappeared for two years, she knew all of this.

Light went out quickly but some went on.  There were always the curious cruel morbid souls who had to feed the need to know.

She found the switch on the wall.  The light was dim but illuminated the room and brightened and heightened her already illuminated mind.  For a moment, she knew she was a killer.  Jake was a killer.  Now, she returned as a killer herself.  A killer. A cold blooded killer.  Although, he had motive.  She had none.

She thought like a killer.  She felt like a killer.  She was a killer and she walked into Jake’s home to kill him.

She could smell him.  He was somewhere just out of sight. 

“Clever boy.  You murdered me.  You left me in that shallow grave dead.  You killed me Jake Mustam.”

The screaming, curdling her blood to a boil was simmering the vengeance inside of her.

“You got away with it you bastard.  You got away with it.  And you’ve been living your life knowing all this time you took mine.  And I know why you did it Jake.  You were cooking the books at Paydon’s Construction.  You were stealing the money.  I never confronted you.  I kept your secret.  But you covered your tracks.  They thought it was my husband, Jeff,  you son of a bitch.  They thought it was Jeff.  The husband always does it.  Like the lady in the chains in the bottom of the lake.  Jeff went to jail.  Oh my God.  Where are you?  Where are you?  You greedy murderer.”

She knew all of this information but she didn’t know how.

Bastard, son of a bitch, these were not words a good church attending Catholic girl used.  Just where had she come back from?

She glanced at the branch weapon.  Oh yeah, kill Jake Mustam.

Her voice was getting louder and louder.

“You murdered me.  You thought I was gone forever.  Jokes on you Jake.  Now why don’t you come out so we can talk?”

Jake Mustam appeared from the shadows, behind the curtain in the living room.  He was hiding there all this time.

His eyes widened, so wide, Amanda thought they might burst open right there and deny her the pleasure of using that fancy little weapon.

“Amanda?”

“Jake,” her voice hardened with purpose, her eyes deadlocked on him.  He wouldn’t leave her sight until the deed was done.

Speechless.

She walked toward him and he inched back into a sliding glass window.

“Help.  Help me.  She’s crazy.  She’s trying to kill me.”

She glided toward him now, her prize in sight.  Inches from him, she brandished her weapon for him to see.

His eyes fluttered.  They darted back and forth.  He wildly made an attempt to break the glass on the sliding glass window behind him.  She lunged in front of the door so he couldn’t unlock it.

Plump, nearing fifty, wearing a black shirt and jeans, barefooted, with stubble around his chin and face, Jake Mustam would rather have broken his fists and scarred his hands than face the monster before him.

She was bloody and scary, with eyes that wouldn’t blink.  She had more force than fifty men set out to build a house from the ground up.

Quietly now, she made her case.

“You lured me out to your truck, said you’d drive me home.  You sabotaged my car, so I’d be defenseless and dependent on you to drive me home.  You made sure we’d be working late that night didn’t you?  You waited until a day Jeff would be working second shift.  You had it all planned out.  Didn’t you?”

He nodded his head.  Staring at the miracle and the monster in front of him, he marveled at the woman he killed confronting her killer- him.

“You stopped at the quarry and you told me about the stealing at the Paydon Construction.  But you knew I already knew.  Didn’t you?”

He nodded.

“Say it.  You knew.”

“Yes, I did,” he meekly agreed.

“That was so nice of you to give me an explanation.  I tried to run from the truck but you hunted me like some wild prey.  You hit me pretty hard with the rock on the head.  You hit me with it again.  And again.  And again.  I don’t remember the rest Jake.  Do you?”

He shook his head no.

“You don’t think about it anymore?  You don’t sleep with one eye open?  You’ve got a clear conscience I see.  How nice.”

He screamed for help and wrestled with her and the sliding glass door again.  It was no use.  She was beyond human now, a monster indeed.

No one came.  More lights turned out.

His screams echoed through the night.

“Jeff died too.  He died from a coronary in jail.  All that pressure.  All those fights.  You lied.  You killed.  You stole.  That’s a lot of sinning Jake.”

She held up the branch weapon.

“No Amanda, don’t.”

“This one’s for Jeff,” she announced before plunging it into one eye and then another.

His face took on a gruesome tone much like hers, anguish in voice led to defeat and a wobbling of his legs, as he collapsed to the ground before her.

Blood stains on the ground followed stab after stab to his now defenseless body.

She watched him take his last breath.

She dusted off her hands and the blood dripped.

“I guess now we’re even now,” she whispered in his ear, “see you in hell.”

She got up from the grizzly scene, turned off the light, left Jake Mustam for dead and wandered out into the night.

The strange tale might have ended there with a murder victim exacting revenge on their killer from beyond the grave but these were strange days in Cotter, Arkansas.

The Amazon man raised the dead.  And they would keep on rising.

Bloodied, scarred, stabbed and poked, a blinded Jake Mustam drew in a breath of fresh air.  He gurgled up blood, it was a surprise to him.