Antithesis
By Nick Egoroff

CHAPTER 1

The body of a Caucasian male lay sprawled out, not unlike an abandoned potato sack, fine leather shoes lost under a pool of dirty water, while earth and mud lathered the clean-cut features. It was clothed in a dark tailored suit, now covered in filth and irrecoverably ruined, even without the deep red blood stain spread out over the expensive collar. The body appeared to be in it’s mid thirties, in the prime of its life, but still and lifeless as death.

Mother Nature, in accordance with some mysterious earthly whim, tried to expunge the last vestige of remaining life from the hapless man. She pounded his unconscious body with golf-ball sized hail. When the shallow breaths continued, she thundered her frustration and lit up the heavens with lightening six times hotter than the surface of the sun. Then whipped out torrents of frigid rain in an attempt to drown or freeze the obstinate malignancy.

The body stubbornly held on to the world of the living, balking at the soothing summons into the other. Though every hour it lay unshielded in the hostile elements brought it closer and closer to the point beyond which there could be no return.

Then a finger twitched and the eyes snapped open. They rolled around wildly, darting this way and that looking for the danger the subconscious mind frantically attempted to impress upon them.

The night was dark and empty. Visibility limited to just a few yards through the rain.

Not able to locate the threat, the effort to keep the eyes open and focussed appeared too much strain on the weakened anatomy and their intensity started to waver as the lids drooped back down to earth. Within seconds the body was back in the soothing arms of death’s sirens.

The cold wetness had soaked through his clothes down to the frigid epidermis. The debilitating chill had gone even further, burrowing all the way through to the faintly burning spark and essence of the man. Rain covering the ground around him was like a cold compress on a fevered forehead. It triggered a memory in the restless dreams of the half-conscious mind.

He was ten years old. His friends had dared him into swimming in the frigid churning waters of the Kenai River. Crisp morning air still bit deeply on the cold Alaskan mornings, but spring was well on its way, with wild flowers starting to open their petals toward the vaguely warming rays of the sun.

Never one to give in on a dare, he had shucked his clothes down to his briefs. An arctic breeze chilled his bare flesh and he hesitated, glancing back at the neighborhood boys. To back out now was to accept the mantle of cowardice forever from those he wished to call his friends. He could see by their expressions that they were confident he lacked the courage to continue.

So he jumped! Then screamed as freezing pain knifed through his shocked anatomy. It was more painful than anything he had ever felt before. Instead of feeling the frigid ice of the river his whole body burned with fire. Fortunately his new friends had gotten over their shock quick enough to grab and yank him out of the water before the current pulled him out to sea or his privates froze off.

“How are you feeling today, Johnny?” His mother’s soothing voice crooned over him the next morning, as fever burned through his skinny frame.

“Not good.” Johnny’s head burned with fever while his body shivered uncontrollably.

“The water is freezing and the current in the river is so strong. You could have drowned. Or froze to death.” She felt betrayed and deeply hurt. After everything she’d done to get this little boy. Her precious son. Had he no idea how important he was to her--taking such risks with his life? “You’re very lucky to be alive, young man.”

“I know.”

“You realize how much worry you put me through?”

“I’m sorry, Mom.”

“I just can’t imagine what were you thinking?”

“They said I was scared,” Johnny tried to explain.

“There are times when you have to be scared.”

Johnny looked away. Unable to look at the naked truth in her pained eyes.

“You do crazy things like this…” she paused, searching for words to express her exasperation in a way he’d understand. “Someday you could find yourself in so much trouble you will never be able to get out of it.”

“But,” he said in a small guilty voice, “they called me names.” Her own pain mirrored in his voice caused all the steam to flow right out of her.

“Oh, honey,” She relented, wiping a tear trickling down her weathered cheek. She gently smoothed back the damp hair from her child’s burning forehead.

“Just promise me, you won’t scare me like this.” She repeated. “Ever again. Understand?”

“I promise, Mom.” Johnny said solemnly. Then when she turned to go--he continued--trying to lighten the moment. “I would have proved I wasn’t afraid for nothing, but I made them pay me five dollars for it.”

Johnny laid his aching head back onto the damp pillow wondering at the way the throbbing matched his heartbeat.

Thump. Thump. Thump.

Demons now pounded his head in a similar fashion, just as they had those long years ago. Each thump raised the pain in his head to a newer more excruciating level. And it was no warm mattress supporting his agonized body, but a bed of earth and mud, with freezing rain for a comforter.

Johnny tried to lift himself up to survey his surroundings through the liquid darkness spreading around him and was rewarded with a fresh bolt of pain. Surging via the nerve fibers through his shivering body, it built up to a tremendous crescendo, finally detonating into his rupturing cranium.

The strength went out of his body and he fell back into the mud. Johnny turned his face to the side with a groan, spitting out dirt and grime, grimacing with pain and disgust.

From this angle, he could see his surroundings slightly better through the engulfing rain. Square, rounded, and crossed shapes of inanimate sentinels rose up out of the ground watching with stone-blind sight. Lined up in rows, they wordlessly passed down the news.

'This one awakes.'

They had been there a long time and seen it all. They were confident he would be back. Permanently. Possibly even sooner then he expected.

Johnny stared out at the granite block-like objects rising up out of the ground. There was a strange familiarity to them. Johnny had seen them before. He was sure of it. His heartbeat involuntarily sped up to a rapid staccato, as he desperately tried to figure out what the hell they could be. Not a thing came to his tortured mind. Whatever they were and wherever this place was, one thing was sure.

It gave him the creeps.

Slowly counting to three, face set with determination, Johnny painfully forced himself all the way up. Leaning back into a sitting position, he tried to catch his breath. As the exploding fireworks behind his eyes subsided, he blearily surveyed his surroundings through the soupy darkness.

Grass spread around him like a glimmering fungus. Normally a rich green, in the black of night it appeared a deep blood-red, relishing the millions of rain droplets drowning it. It danced with a life all its own, covering everything except the muddy mound of freshly turned-up soil under him.

A chill reverberated through his spine, causing the hair at the nape of his neck to stiffen. Row upon row of headstones spread out in every direction before his horrified and disbelieving eyes.

He was in a cemetery in the dead of night.

My God! How in the world had he ended up here?

And why?

Was he dead?

The first one up on Judgement Day?

No, he felt he was already in hell. Forced to wander the earth--an unwanted ghost--till he was completely forgotten by his loved ones and fade away into broken-hearted misery.

Did he even have any loved ones?

His mother?

He couldn’t remember. Was she still alive?

With a few exceptions about his early childhood Johnny realized he couldn’t remember a damn thing. It was as though God had mistaken his memory for pie and sliced off a huge helping, leaving Johnny nothing but broken pieces and remnants that no longer fit together.

Whatever else was going on, Johnny knew he couldn’t be dead. Dead men wouldn’t be freezing their butt off, while their head felt it was pounded by a giant blacksmith with a fifty-pound sledgehammer.

He had to be alive. But where in hell was he? Johnny pushed the throbbing clouds obscuring his reasoning towards the back of his mind, trying to think.

He was in a cemetery. Tombstones surrounded him. The ground sloped away and he could barely make out a dark line with more graves beyond. Maybe it was a road. If he could walk, he’d follow the road till it led to something recognizable, or some one alive who could tell him where he was.

Lifting a hand out of the dirt that weighed a hundred pounds, Johnny gingerly examined a giant throbbing lump making the back of his head swell up like a misshapen melon. Sucking in a breath, he came to a conclusion.

Some one out there really didn’t like him.

Johnny shivered uncontrollably, pulling back at the cold wet clothes sticking to his body. Why was he in a cemetery on such a miserable night? Everybody in their right mind should be indoors on a night like this, nice and cozy, snuggling up to some warm body.

Why was he out here in the cold with the dead?

What had brought him here?

A dull thud reverberated through the air and ground around him, causing Johnny to jump up with shock.

What was that?

Had it come from the ground under him? Johnny found himself on hands and knees eyes frantically searching the wet mound. Had the sound come from there?

My God! Was somebody in there trying to get out?

The ground seemed to move, right in front of his disbelieving eyes? Johnny gathered up his scattered faculties, knowing he was going to attempt to run like hell, even if he couldn’t, if the ground or anything else so much as twitched.

Nothing happened.

Just the rain, coming down in ceaseless sheets, drenching everything in its path, giving Johnny the feeling of being deep under water.

Releasing a breath he was unaware of holding Johnny squinted at the rest of the mound. It had a soft rounded peak, sides spreading out to the dark grass. The fresh soil no longer able to soak in any moisture, tried to resist the call of water and gravity as it raced down, in a rush to get out of there. Something I should strongly consider doing himself, Johnny thought, trying to make out the newly chiseled headstone in front of the freshly covered grave.

Another dull boom shook the ground around him, followed quickly by a tremendous crack of thunder, and lightening lit up the landscape around Johnny as he stared in horror at the words on the tombstone in front of him:

John Andrew Mead. Born July 13, 1968. Died July 5, 2005.

It was his name. His grave!

The man known as Volk peered through the rain, out the car windshield, parked under a huge spruce tree. He hated the constant rain. After this job was completed he would leave this cold rain, and never come back to this god-forsaken wet hole in the ground. He would take a nice long vacation. Somewhere warm.

“Gunna miss the violence, though.” Volk cackled under his breath as he climbed out of the car.

It had been years since he’d been here in Portland, and had forgotten how terrible the weather could be in Oregon’s North Willamette Valley. No wonder people went nuts here. In the last three months it had rained, drizzled, showered, and come down in buckets. The rest of the time it had been cloudy, no doubt, preparing for more rain.

He hadn’t much choice. He had to go out there and get rid of this stranger poking his nose in other peoples' business. Things had finally quieted down after the funeral and been proceeding according to plan. Then this stupid idiot showed up.

Who did the guy think he was, anyway?

James Bond? And why was he here?

If left to his machinations he could stir up a lot of trouble. Bring the whole damn thing tumbling down after all the work and planning they’d put into it. Volk was not going to let that happen.

Little was known of the origins of Volk. A lot was whispered. But his abilities were never in question. He would appear from nowhere, like his Russian namesake--the wolf—-then when he vanished, his victims disappeared along with him. Never to be heard from or seen again.

Volk checked his .45 caliber SIG-Sauer P220 pistol its shoulder holster. Originally designed after the Swiss P210, SIG combined forces with Sauer of Germany enabling it to be sold outside Switzerland despite their stringent export restrictions.

The SIG-Sauer was his weapon of choice, but that didn’t keep him from carrying a second smaller hideout .22 pistol in an ankle holster. It was his ace if he needed to get out of a hole. Even though it didn’t have a lot of stopping power it was a whole lot quieter, giving him flexibility. In his line of work that meant he stayed alive and some one else died. Furthermore, the noise volume in these trees and rain could easily be mistaken for a car's backfire or even a door slam.

Gracefully, Volk moved out through the rain, dark waterproof gear fitting snugly against his huge frame. He turned the hateful rain into his ally, hiding him from anyone who might be out on this dismal night. Using the trees as additional cover, Volk advanced, intending to enter the cemetery from the back. Once he had the body, he’d retrace his steps back to the car.

Following this route should put me right on top the interloper, and out of sight the whole way, he mused. Of course, he didn’t really need to be so cautious. According to the bitch that called him, the idiot was nosing around when she had cold-cocked him with a tire-iron. If his luck held, the guy would either still be out cold or dead already, simplifying things even further. Just dump the body in the muddy waters of the nearby Willamette River with the concrete blocks from the back of the car and trouble no more.

Finally, he was at the edge of the cemetery, and there ahead of him he could make out the fresh mound among the headstones.

He paused, cold blue eyes taking in every detail.

The empty black night. Abandoned gravestones. Nothing but darkness from the direction of the buildings, which were conveniently over the hillside. And rain curtailing long-range visibility.

Perfect.

Just the way he liked it. No witnesses or interference for the job at hand.

Volk pulled the SIG-Sauer out with his right hand while simultaneously removing the silencer with his left. Slowly and meticulously, he mated the two by screwing the silencer into the specially modified barrel of the .45 handgun, careful to keep the threads lined up.

Holding the elongated killing tool out in front of him, like the head of a venomous viper, Volk zeroed in on his target.

The gun cocked and pointed.

He was in his prime. A lethal machine. Every muscle and fiber of his body honed through years of practice for this moment and others like it. He lived for the hunt and made sure his prey didn’t afterwards.

In three seconds he was at his destination.

Volk moved gracefully around the mound of earth.

Finger tightening on the trigger.

Gun zeroing to the target.

There was no one there.