Free Unkillable by Patrick E. McLean Page B

window. Her flesh pressed against the strictures of a woman’s business suit like meat pressing against a sausage casing as she hunched over a laptop computer.
    “You see, she’s naught but a ball of stress that one. She’s worried about her job, she’s worried about having kids, about eating too much – but her body don’t know any of that. All her body knows, especially that grey bit at the top of her spine, is that it’s stressed. The same as if a tiger was trying to eat her. And so it reacts accordingly. Adrenaline, a desire to fight or flee…”
    He turned to me and summed up his argument, “And there you have it, she’s nothing more than a prisoner of her constructs. More animal than human, despite what you may have been led to believe from her puffy opposable thumbs.”
    “Yeah, she’s screwed just like me. Most people are. What’s your point about good and evil?”
    “Well, it’s an instinct isn’t it? Just like the stress. See at one time, it had a point. Ye know, running from Tigers and all that. A mother’s insane courage when her child is attacked. But this good and evil, it don’t serve anymore.”
    “But, Vlade isn’t evil. The Rat, okay, I’ll buy that he’s evil.”
    “And where does that leave you?”
    “Man, I’m just out here, doing what I have to do.”
    “But you’ve killed, I can smell it on you. And you’ve felt nothing of it. Done it as neatly as parting your hair. Does that make you evil?”
    I thought about it for a minute, “Well, I didn’t have a choice. I mean, I had to.”
    “And ‘ow do you know that The Rat isn’t just doing what he has to do? I’d hate to stand in the dock with that as my defense. But they’ll never catch Auld Jack, he’s far too wiley for that.”
    I hate people who refer to themselves in the third person. Also, I hate the English. And finally, I hate people who can never seem to come to the point. Auld Jack was winning on all counts.
    “So there’s no good. No evil. Then what’s the point?”
    “The point, me lad, is that it’s what you make of it. What you choose to believe.”
    “Belief? Like that ever changed anything.”
    “Au contraire, it changes everything. Take me for instance. People know Auld Jack. They fear Auld Jack,” he said with a smile that revealed a mouthful of horrible teeth, “And that gives me power. That’s how I go on.”
    “Yeah well, what about me?”
    “Nobody knows you, nobody fears you. You’ve no power whatever.”
    “That’s a great help.”
    “Ahh, ahh, but it’s a gift. It’s a gift. Ye see, in the normal course of affairs, a man like you would be born, believe things he never questioned, and then pass utterly from the earth. But you’re a special case. You’ve been granted an exception. You’ve had a chance to see through the veil of things as they are. The senseless hypocrisy of it all.”
    “Yeah and ain’t that just grand.”
    “Well, sure, it will most likely cost you your immortal soul, but it’s not like you believe in that kind of thing anyway, so you won’t mind.”
    “Yeah, but what if it believes in me?”
    Jack beamed. “Yes, exactly. It believes in you.”
    “What am I supposed to do? About The Rat? About the deal? I don’t think I can kill Vlade.”
    “My son, you’ve to figure what you believe. From that will come your course, and the power required sail it. Belief is the wind. And all these people,” he gestured at the city that surrounded us, “Their tiny little voices make the wind.”
    “What does that mean?”
    Jack drew close. Again I was shocked at how fast he was. I didn’t even have time to leap backwards. “We’re special you and I. You’ve something to become. Something beautiful and terrible that flashes in the night and glistens like wet blood on cobblestones. It’s lies. It’s all lies and always has been.” He pressed a straight razor into my hand. “Now let the rage out to play.”
    He blocked my view, but it didn’t matter. I could