The Lazurai Returns-1
1255 Words
The Lazurai Returns
BY C. C. BROWER AND J. R. Kruze
IWHAT BROUGHT ME TO ‘Cagga was a string of miracles. More of a hobby than an actual case. I was on a case following a cold trail of a Lazurai.
You might have heard about them on the news. But probably not. There was a terrorist bombing some years back that involved a hospital. Only the youngest babies survived. If you could call it that. The government hushed it up and eventually leaked it out that all of them had died.
The problem was, they didn’t. Because they couldn’t die and they couldn’t be killed. The government tried. Because they were walking death to anyone else they touched or even got near. As bad things always get worse (like when the government is involved) they escaped. And a few of us were given the details of the case so we could track them down.
I’m a private investigator, sometimes bounty hunter. And I’m the last surviving tracker that was on the Lazurai case. Because the other trackers died and the original Lazurai just disappeared. A trail would lead into long forgotten wastelands, and just end. Sometimes, there might be a strange inscription in a rock. I remember seeing one that was the permanent outline of a human being. Life-size. Like he had been absorbed into the side of a cliff. They bored into the side of it and found his DNA actually inside those rocks.
But no foul play, just weird.
The last one I know of was what they call a third-generation infection. The original Lazurai found babies and turned them. They grew to become teen-agers and turned other babies. No record of the Lazurai giving birth, just their converting other’s babies.
Into some sort of deadly superhuman. But these were the toughest to track. Because there wasn’t a track of death following them in all cases. That was mostly the conventional way to find Lazurai - find a “serial killer” who was tracked by movement, not by a particular “MO” of type of death. You’d see a string of deaths and a viral outbreak that happened on a trail, usually a back highway.
Eventually, all the trails quit. And no one ever could figure out why. If you were very smart and very lucky, you’d find some sign where they seemed to melt into the landscape like that one I just told you about. (Dumb and unlucky often wound up as a dead tracker.)
We didn’t even know how old the Lazurai lived. It was very possible that they were immortal, only ending this existence on their own, but not by natural or unnatural causes. The government had tried everything on them at first. They only adapted and became more lethal. But like I said, most of the original set had suicided.
The few babies they contacted were the next problem, but these mostly learned to control themselves as they grew through teenage years and not be virally infectious to everyone around them. (Probably helped having someone to raise them who didn't die off on contact or exposure.)
Very occasionally, those could be flushed out. Or their families and community would force them to leave. And again, enough shunning would result in their simply disappearing.
The third generation was the worst to track. They were only lethal by direct choice. Occasional deaths would happen, and it would track to someone of these who got real angry. The government got a few of these scooped up. But their original infection and DNA mutation always beat whatever drugs and treatment they tried to “cure” it. They’ve got a lab, way deep underground, where the “best” thing they came up with was to drive the person into apathy so they just walked into the wall and absorbed themselves into it. There are outlines all around the walls there, like painted discolorations.
Only it isn’t paint. And they don’t know that those Lazurai couldn’t just “un-absorb” themselves one day. So no one ever goes down there, except their captured Lazurai.
But they ran out of available Lazurai to capture, and all the other leads dried up.
I don’t know the last time I’ve had a paycheck for chasing one down. I went back to chasing regular human-type criminals down. A guy’s gotta live, somehow. I’m good at figuring things out, finding things out. So the Lazurai went onto a back burner for me. Like I said, became a hobby.
This one was different. She left a string of miracles behind her. People healed when medicine couldn’t. By her touch. And it’s the hardest thing to get their “cures” to talk about it. Like you don’t want to giveaway someone who just saved your life.
I get that. So I’m not tracking this girl to bring her in. I’ve got personal reasons now. And she’s probably my only hope.
IICHUCK’S OLD BEATER truck got me right outside the suburban borders of ‘Cagga. Then I finally let it die. That truck I’d gotten started with a new crankcase of oil, new transmission fluid, and a full tank of gas. And I had to touch a few parts under the hood.
It literally became part of me. So it would start up only for me, and no one else could make it run. They’d try. I’d even leave the keys in it and watch them from a diner window sometimes. They’d see me drive in, see the windows down, look inside for the keys and nip in there as quick as they could. But the battery was always dead.
If they tried to tow it for scrap, it wouldn’t come out of gear and the brakes would lock up solid. The funniest time was once was when I was watching them over a third cup of coffee and a second slice of pie. Like I had nothing to do that day. But I could feel them coming for it, so I just waited and smiled to the waitress who brought me re-fills, as I looked out their big front diner window.
The guys pulled up with a beater tow truck, of all things. And they couldn’t get the rear end of that truck off the ground. Straps broke. Chains broke. And their hoist motor burned out. Smoke rose off it. Even tried to back into it to get it to break free. All they did was bend their own backend up. Like they had hit a battleship or a concrete bridge support.
I paid off the waitress in coin, then came out to have some fun with them.
They were really pissed and frustrated beyond belief. Just standing there. They knew the cops wouldn’t mess with them, not in their own neighborhood.
So I just came up, this white girl with red hair. and put on an innocent look.
And got some of the most foul-mouthed nonsense coming back at me. But me, I was like that truck. I didn’t ask to be hit on or abused. So anyone that tried to get near me got sicker and sicker they closer they came. When they moved away, they felt better the further away they got.
Funny, huh?
At last, I just walked up to the truck, opened the door and slid in. Turned the key, started up with a roar, then adjusted my mirrors (smiled to them through that reflection) and drove off in second gear like nothing had happened.
Just once did anyone try to come after me.
Their truck just stopped dead in the street. Engine dead. All wheels locked. I just drove on, under the posted speed limit, obeying all the local laws.
- - - -
- Writer
