1952

Roberta Nash scanned the darkened area closely, she knew that she had heard somebody. The street was almost pitch black but as she quietly marched forward with her rifle in one hand and with the other pulled the brim of her cap down lower; turning the corner she saw the silhouette of a man with his back to her. The man seemed to be looking around for something or somebody. The 23-year-old woman quietly crept up behind the man and without warning, stuck the barrel of the rifle into the middle of his back and told him, "Stick 'em up!"

The man let out a small yelp of surprise and threw his hands over his head. Then he recognized the voice and turned around. Roberta saw that it was Graham Korda, a man she knew very well, namely because he was her current boyfriend.

"What're you doing here?" she asked.

"Being grateful that's not a bayonet," he answered.

She rested the gun at her side and said, "They send all the young, able bodied men off to Korea, and then they wonder what we do when the crime rates hit zenith, and we're stuck with the," she looked Graham up and down and added, "Rotten leftovers."

"Very funny," he dryly remarked, "And exactly how long do you plan to stay out here playing Ma Kettle?"

"Watch it," she said as she jabbed him in the stomach with the gun again. He grunted and doubled over momentarily.

As Roberta had pointed out, when the war in Korea broke out the draft went into effect again and pulled many young men from their home lives and jobs and this included men in law enforcement as well as the local night watchmen who made sure nobody broke into any of the buildings in the business district. So Roberta had taken it upon herself to make sure that things remained quiet and peaceful now until the men came home. She'd been doing the nightly rounds as substitute night guard for a couple of months but the time in which she had been acquainted with Graham went further back than that. They had met six months ago one night when they had crossed paths during a tunnel run.

Roberta was born with a wild streak and she had never been content to settle down into a proper woman's role. She just barely finished school, after which she ran away from home and she had been making her living off of wages placed on drag races, of which she was a constant competitor and very seldom the loser in any of them. That night she had been speeding through a tunnel with her lights off, supposed to be driving at another racer who was also in the dark, at a speed of about 60 miles an hour. The only catch was that Roberta always looked for ways to bend the rules, and at the last possible second, to ensure that she won, she hit her headlights and blinded the other driver, always causing them to swerve right into the wall of the tunnel. That was what had happened to Graham, only he hadn't been racing; he'd only had the misfortune of crossing through the same tunnel that she thought she was playing chicken with someone else in.

As predicted, his car had slammed into the wall, and when he got out of the mess, Roberta thought that she might have done some serious damage to him because it looked like he'd gotten a long cut running down his face. But as it turned out it was an old scar that he'd already had for many years, though he refused to tell her where he got it from. That had been how the two had met; and for some bizarre reason they had decided to see more of each other following the incident as well. In that time she had found out that he was about 30, he lived alone and his only family consisted of three brothers that he had lost touch with over the years. In time they were both surprised to learn how well they could get along with one another and from there; though neither knew how, it was only a few small steps from being able to tolerate one another to being in love. Roberta refused to settle down and so shunned any ideas of marriage, which she was relieved to learn suited Graham just as well, complaining that he'd already been married and found it the most dangerous and difficult puzzle to get out of, and Roberta agreed.

"Murder is messy, divorce is messier," she said once, "Might as well just stay married for all the trouble it causes."

"I think that's what I like about you," he told her, "We think alike."

"What a revolting concept," she replied.

On this night, business as a night watchman was slow as usual, and it was decided that Roberta could take enough time away from her post for a game of cards around the corner. The city shut down for the night every night and with everybody gone and all lights out save for the lamp posts, it became rather claustrophobic noting how empty the large concrete jungle was; not a soul around and nobody to help if anything should go wrong.

Roberta and Graham perched themselves on the sidewalk under one of the brighter street lights so they could see their cards.

"So tell it to me again why when they sent out the draft cards they passed you up?" Roberta asked.

"You know perfectly well why, I told you already," he responded.

"It figures, they take all the nice fresh young guys and leave us women with the likes of you," she said, "That's like trying to make stew out of the horse that's going for glue."

"Shut up," he told her, knowing she was only trying to throw him off by talking, "What've you got?"

"You first," she said.

He put his cards down and showed four kings. Roberta whistled and said, "That's good, that's very good, but I'm better." And to show, she put down her cards and revealed four aces, and she held her hand out to him and said only, "Gimme."

Graham grumbled something under his breath as he got up and started to undo his jacket. He made the mistake of doing it with his back to Roberta and she took that opportunity to jump him from behind, and with the hand being quicker than the eye, she had managed to handcuff his arms behind his back.

"Alright," he said, clearly not amused, "What's the game this time?"

"Just a little practice," she replied as she patted him down, "It's been a while since I've had to do this, and if I catch anybody around here, I'm going to be ready for them."

"Very funny," he dryly told her.

"Graham," Roberta said, "Can you get out of those?"

"What do you think?!" he asked.

"Answer the question," she said.

"No, why?"

She laughed maniacally and replied, "Perfect."

He felt her hands reach around his waist to the buckle on his belt, but they were interrupted when a light shone on them from behind, and they knew they had company.

"What's going on here?"

Roberta turned around and saw it was O'Reilly, one of the older cops whose beat ended six blocks away from here.

"Nash, that you?" he asked as he tried to identify the woman with a gun.

"Yeah it's me," she replied.

"What's going on?" he asked.

Roberta turned around and hit Graham in the back and said, "I caught this guy trying to break into the pawnshop, but I checked, he's got nothing and I think he's just a bit tight. So I'm going to personally escort him home and let him sober up."

O'Reilly shone his light in Graham's face and gave him the once over before deciding that Roberta could be on her way with him. Roberta kicked Graham in the back and told him to start walking, and he did, and once they turned the corner and were out of O'Reilly's sight, they both stopped and Graham barked at Roberta to get him out of the handcuffs.

"Somehow I get the feeling this isn't your first time," she said as she took the keys out of her pocket.

"And could the same be said for you?" he asked as the cuffs opened and he shook his wrist to get the circulation going again.

"I fail to see what that has to do with anything," she replied.

"You wouldn't if you were in this position," he assured her.

"Eh, shut up," she said as she kicked him again. Graham spun around and glared at her as he said, "You do that one more time and you'll be sorry."

"I already am, I met you didn't I?" she returned.

They kept at each other's necks for days or weeks on end, and through it all they never got anywhere and only seemed to go around in circles to revive the same old arguments the next time they started fighting again. But in between they found they were able to get along with one another; they'd quickly found out that they were very much alike, they liked speed, they liked to cheat death, they both enjoyed a good strong drink and many of them, and neither had any problem fighting anybody and both had had their shares in life of kicking and punching and clawing their ways out of one fine mess or another, sometimes just barely with their lives intact.

Through it all, Roberta never gave up racing, anybody that was up for the chase she would take on and gladly put her money where her mouth was. She could drive practically anything and she won almost every time; so it was only natural that sooner or later she would make an enemy who was sore enough at losing that they'd want to kill her.

Naturally these kinds of things were never found out until it was too late; and it was no exception here when she and Graham got in her convertible coupe one night and drove off. Somehow or other, Roberta had been talked into letting Graham drive her car; whether that would have any impact on the events of that night were never determined. Leaving the town limits, Graham pressed down harder on the accelerator and soon they were going at 50 miles an hour; no big deal, until they came to a turn and he stepped on the brake and nothing happened. He tried again, this time stomping on the brake with both feet and still nothing worked; by now they were going even faster, so he tried grabbing the emergency brake but that proved futile as well. The needle on the speedometer went higher and they went faster and both knew that it was inevitable unless something happened, they were going to crash.

And that's exactly what happened. Graham tried swerving out of the way but the car wound up jumping the curb and smashing against a lamp post. The bodies were half thrown out of the car and finally fell out over the side when their dangling weight became too great.

When Roberta came to, the first thing that she realized was that her teeth were killing her and the pain went from her mouth all the way up to her forehead, and remembering the crash she was amazed that she hadn't been cut into tiny pieces. She opened her eyes and pulled herself up and saw both she and Graham had landed in the middle of the street.

"Graham," she said as she put a hand on her aching head, "Can you get up?"

"I can do better than that," he replied.

Roberta looked back at the car which had just exploded in flames and she realized what a narrow escape they'd had, and how just a couple inches more would've put them directly in the line of fire.

"What happened?" she asked.

She felt him grab her and pull her up as he explained, "Somebody wanted you dead and tampered with the car."

"They came pretty close," she said.

"They didn't come close, they succeeded," he told her.

Roberta laughed, "Oh come on, Graham."

He wasn't laughing however. "If you don't believe me, explain how you got out of that crash without a single cut on you?" He watched the puzzled expression on her face as she looked at her arms and checked her clothes for any blood stains. "Yeah, doesn't make much sense, does it?" he asked.

Roberta didn't know what to make of it. "We couldn't have been thrown out of the car before the crash…so what happened?"

"You aren't going to like it," he told her with a shake of his head, "But that doesn't matter now."

"This is really happening, isn't it?" Roberta asked as she laid down on the brick sidewalk and ran her hands over the sides of her head.

"It is," Graham told her, "Whether for better or worse, I'm not necessarily sure. But it's real, we're real, this is real, you're Immortal and you're going to live forever."

"How is this possible?" Roberta asked as she sat up.

"Nobody knows," he said, "I've been struggling with it for over 4,000 years and I haven't found out either."

"4,000 years?" Roberta groaned, rolled her eyes back in her head and hit the ground again. "So what now? Where do we go from here?"

"It's your life, and at this point there are very few restrictions in your way," he told her, "You just need to remember, keep your head, and don't try to kill another Immortal on holy ground."

"How come?" Roberta looked at him.

Graham shrugged and said, "Nobody knows, just like nobody knows what the prize is supposed to be, but it's been that way since before any of us were born."

"What's it supposed to be, like if you'd kill somebody on holy ground you'd be damned or something?" Roberta asked.

"Could be," Graham replied as he laid back against the pavement as well, as though he were trying to stretch out and get a tan by the light of the street lamp.

"But you don't believe that," she said.

"I don't," he agreed, "I think it was just somebody's idea of there being one place in the world our kind could be considered safe. Everywhere else, we're a moving target."

"That's comforting," she dryly responded. Then something occurred to her, "Nobody saw the crash, nobody knows I'm supposed to be dead, right?"

"Right," Graham agreed hesitantly, "But whoever tampered with your car is going to find it very odd that you were able to just walk away from a crash like that," he pointed to the fiery mess, "Without a mark on you. So if you want to stick around you better find some way to make it look like you were knocked around in the wreck, and that won't be easy because you don't bruise anymore, at least not long term anyway."

Roberta looked at him and said, "And you?"

He shook his head, "I'm no teacher, every student I've ever taken is dead, I've given up on it by now." He seemed to think about it for a minute before adding, "But, let it never be said I never helped one of our own kind in the beginning. A fresh kill is never a good one worth having anyway."

"That's a relief," Roberta dryly remarked.

Roberta had tried to put out of her mind how much things had changed in just a few hours and tried to return to her old life. She tried to ignore the headaches she got whenever Graham came around but it didn't work. And now that she couldn't die she found herself constantly thinking about death, including her own.

Every night she resumed her post as the night watchman for the neighborhood and for a long time things remained calm; but one night as Graham had just shown up to shoot the evening breeze with her, she'd caught a man trying to break into one of the shops and a chase had ensued. On this night, Roberta had traded her rifle for a .38 caliber pistol and she had it drawn and her finger at the trigger and just ready to pull it. She ran off into the night after the man and chased him halfway through the neighborhood; the street lamps cast enough light down so she could see him climbing up the fire escape of an old hotel, she had just landed on the first few steps when she aimed the pistol and fired a shot at the second floor spot where he was. The man fell back but he didn't fall down the stairs, and after only a second to recover, he resumed climbing. Roberta chased up the stairs after him and Graham was following right behind her, and he was also armed but she didn't know it. They had an equal amount of distance between them, when he reached the bottom stairs, she was up to the second floor and ready to shoot again.

But this time the shot that fired wasn't Roberta's, and instead she had been hit. Graham had two guns drawn and with one fired in response in the direction the first bullet had come from. Roberta shook off the momentary shock of being shot and continued climbing the stairs after the first man. Her chase took her straight up to the roof of the hotel and she found herself looking around and finding nobody. Just when she was starting to wonder if she'd lost her mind, she heard a noise from behind and turned just in time to see the man coming at her with a large axe in his hands. Probably, she guessed and found it odd she could even think at a time like that, the one the hotel kept in case of a fire or another emergency where they had to break down one of the doors. She moved just in time to avoid being cut in half and found herself reaching her hands out and also grabbed the long handle of the axe. She and the man stood evenly pitted against one another and wrestled for the weapon but Roberta took caution to remember that the sharp end of the blade was pointed against her favor.

Neither gained much leeway during the fight but it occurred to Roberta they had moved closer to the edge of the roof and it gave her an idea. Using all of her strength she managed to completely flip the axe, and the man with it, causing him to fall back and over the edge and the shocked look on his face as he fell was the last she saw of him, and a few seconds later she heard the SPLAT. Roberta went back to the fire escape and started down when she saw Graham two floors down and saw he'd had his own hands full; half in and out of a window down there was another man who was now dead, exactly what had happened to him she didn't know but looking at Graham she could guess just what the cause of death had been.

"You'd better get your prints off that axe," he advised her.

"Think it's going to matter?" Roberta asked.

"It could," he said, "You're not going to die, and you're not going to get any older, you won't look any older either so you don't want a life sentence in prison, trust me."

As it turned out the next day when the cops found the bodies, the two men were wanted in other states on charges of murder and armed robbery, so few questions were asked about how these two met their untimely demises. Roberta had been cleared, but decided she couldn't do it anymore, not here, she could feel the walls of the city closing in on her and she decided it was in her best interest to get out of there as fast as possible and go somewhere else where nobody knew her and she didn't know the town. Graham had agreed to go with her, but they'd quickly found out that changing locations hadn't done them too many favors. Everywhere they went they found themselves encountering more of the same kind of people and that resulted in more than one rooftop confrontation. One time Roberta found herself being the one thrown over the ledge and as she spiraled down to the street she was in awe of how slowly everything seemed to pass to her and what a hell of a view it was on the way down.

In the days and weeks and months that followed, anywhere and everywhere Roberta went she was still getting into fights with people, most of them she never knew who they were or why they hated her, and she still raced against anybody who foolishly believed they could beat her; and she also still had people coming after her who wanted to kill her, and she found it slightly amusing that of them all, none of them were Immortals. Always mortals, always somebody who shot at her, or tried to stab her, or tried to cut her with a broken beer bottle; and some of them got creative and tried to drown her in the ocean after tying her up, and once she was jumped by four men who hauled her off to an abandoned car garage where they tied her up, put her in the car, locked the windows and siphoned cyanide gas into it through the exhaust pipe. Since she knew she couldn't die, she didn't give the bastards the satisfaction of seeing her panic and futilely struggle for her life. But upon returning to life she had made up her mind that a Nazi and only a Nazi would ever endorse the gas chamber to kill anybody. She had nothing against the death penalty but she personally advocated for firing squads and the electric chair.

Roberta never forgot the faces of the bastards who tried to kill her or who temporarily succeeded in actually killing her; and she found the beauty of being Immortal was she had every chance to even the score. In life, Immortal life especially, revenge wasn't just a virtue, it was a given, a must, it gave her life an added purpose, and she strived to fulfill that purpose. She'd quickly found out that in her new life, few things were off limit to her, she had the money and the ability to get her hands on almost anything, and a large supply of weapons of choice were at the top of that list. She had an extensive collection of guns ranging from pistols and revolvers to sub machine guns, and they all got regular work; for a brief period Roberta had considered the possibility of making her living as a professional assassin. She'd certainly be able to get plenty of practice at it in the years to come if this kept up.

It seemed that Roberta was cursed to have trouble follow her around for the rest of her unnatural life, and maybe it was drawn to her because of her choice of lifestyle; but she refused to settle down and start leading a normal boring life. If she had to be hounded by the scum of the earth for the rest of her days because she was what she was, then so be it. After all it was her life and she was going to live forever, so she could do with it whatever the hell she pleased. And she did, and always with Graham right alongside her. 4,000 years had done a lot to him, but surprisingly he seemed to adapt very well to this current, barbaric, murderously violent, this Atomic Age.

AN: I know the chronology's off but I just couldn't be convinced to make this the first chapter.