1974

The good died young. Evil lived forever. If these two statements revealed to be true, Maude Tompkins was sure she walked a tight rope between the two and could go either way. The 27-year-old blonde woman who was described by those who knew her, as the female equivalent of Fatty Arbuckle standing near 6 feet tall and somewhere around 300 pounds, though like Fatty she always proclaimed, all muscle, was not necessarily by nature a mean person or a violent person, but violence had come easily to her all her life. It had also become a necessity in her life, starting at an early age. By now she had few memories of her parents and her life growing up, all she knew for fact was that these days she was alone and had only herself to rely on, a lesson that she had learned well years ago. As an adult she'd thrown herself into very violent and destructive behavior, her actions were evil but never committed for evil's sake, but rather a series of necessary evils as she saw them to be.

It was September of 1974 and the country was still mourning the loss of Buford Pusser the previous month; the sheriff of McNairy County in Tennessee, a man who had brought new meaning to the term 'speak softly and carry a big stick'. He'd had a movie made all about his life and his constant struggles to take down the corrupt forces in his jurisdiction; including those that had brutally taken away his wife from him when she happened to be riding with him out to a routine call. A second movie had been planned, and he was supposed to star in it as himself, but he had been killed right after that announcement was made. Officially the cause of death was listed as a car accident, but anybody who knew anything about him knew better, and knew that the other side of the law had finally caught up with the only man in the county who tried to serve the law. Aside from those who knew him best, Maude doubted anybody mourned for the loss of this big, righteous man more than she did. She had never personally known him but he was her personal hero. She'd said time and again that the world needed more of him, heroes were always few and far between and in short supply. And while it may have needed more of him, Maude knew that until that day came, she would have to do for the time being.

All her life she'd had to fight, it was something that when she was a kid, everybody said she would outgrow when she grew up; well here she was all grown up, and if anything the fighting had only gotten worse. The reason why hadn't changed, all these years later she was still fighting for her life and the lives of anybody else who needed protecting. In the city where she lived, the police had gone on strike for financial reasons a month ago, and now it was every man for himself; and as a result, the town where she'd grown up and spent her whole life looked almost as much like Vietnam as Vietnam did. There was always somebody causing trouble, every night there was something or some place set on fire and riots breaking out: people got shot, people got stabbed, people got their brains beat out, and people died, and she looked for the governor or whoever was in charge to resolve the issue by dropping a bomb on the whole damn place and getting it over with. The quiet little town where she had grown up now looked like a war zone and anything that could confirm that it wasn't, remained to be seen.

Due to her size and her immense strength, Maude had always had an advantage over anybody who tried to get in her way, but that wasn't enough anymore because every lowlife and his brother walked the streets with guns and knives and God knew what else; so when she took to the streets to do her part of neighborhood protection, she carried a large club with her. Originally it had been a discarded fence post but it wasn't fitted right for her hands for easy swinging and clobbering so she'd whittled down one end so she had a handle, then it seemed dumb to leave the other end like it was so she rounded it out so it was a real club, in fact bearing some resemblance to a very large baseball bat. At face value it hadn't seemed a very practical weapon of choice given what everybody else carried and how easy they were to conceal; but Maude also operated under the theory of her weapon didn't need to be cleaned, reloaded, and could never jam, so those were several points in her own favor.

She had her own beat that she walked, through her neighborhood and she also worked as protection at the bar on her street as well. People were bad enough as it was, even stone cold sober they could be dangerous and potential killers, but when they got drunk, and in a public place with a lot of innocent bystanders, then it was worse. Already she'd been called on to beat out several men's brains, and the ones that didn't succumb either quickly or slowly and painfully to death caused by skull fractures and blunt force trauma to the head, took the hint and never bothered coming back. With the local cops out on strike and no money to bring in the state police to investigate the matters either, these damn fools were just hauled off to the county coroner's office for half hearted autopsies with reports that never got filed anywhere and then were shipped off for funeral preparations, at least among those who had families to bury them, the rest got stuck in a potters field just like the people already in jail. And the places where they went down were left bloodier than a slaughterhouse but such was becoming a daily routine now and so the bars were found in need of a little extra cleanup before closing for the night. Really when you got down to it, it was just a modernized Wild West out east. The only law right now was in a fight, the fastest person who could kill was the winner.

For the most part she wasn't worried for her own life because she'd always been lucky in that regard, but there had been a couple of times that some bastard had also gotten lucky. One time during a bar fight, somebody had knocked her in the head so hard that she would've sworn as she went down that she could've heard a crunch in her own skull. But apparently she'd only been knocked unconscious, she woke up a short while later and found herself still lying on the bar floor. Her head had hurt initially but after a little while it went away; but lately Maude had been wondering if maybe there had been more damage than she thought because every now and then she kept getting headaches and a buzzing ring in her ears. The headaches came and went and were usually very brief but all the same Maude was starting to consider seeing a doctor about them and see if she'd been left with any brain damage.

But tonight, she strolled into the Four Leaf Clover bar with her club at her side like an exaggerated walking stick and glanced around to see if already anybody was getting out of line. So far everything looked to be alright, but she was going to be here for the next several hours and she was sure that before the night was over, somebody was going to get drunk out of his mind and start acting like an idiot, and when he did, she was going to be here to throw him out. So, she walked over to the bar stool specifically reserved for her since she could jump to her feet and go into action in a moment's notice, and planted herself there for the night and just watched everybody who came in, went out, got something to drink, messed with the jukebox or the pinball machine or the pool tables, and she also watched out the windows for any signs of trouble.

After about an hour, her head started throbbing again, just, she noticed, as some new guy walked into the bar and right before the bell over the door rang, oddly enough noise never seemed to have any effect on these headaches that just came and went frequently. She got a good look at the new person who came in; he was a fat man not built too differently than she was, looked a few years older than she was, with an almost completely scalped head with just a little blonde hair on top. He was laughing in response to something the man behind him had said, he had a deep voice that boomed all throughout the bar as he chuckled at something that clearly he found very amusing. Already Maude had an idea that this guy was going to be trouble. She also noticed how he stopped right after he got in the door and seemed to be looking around, as if he was watching for somebody. But he shrugged it off and followed his friend over to the bar and ordered a couple of beers.

If he was going to be trouble, Maude knew it would be a while, one he didn't seem to be drunk yet, and two he was too fat for a couple of beers to take much effect. She looked up at the clock on the wall and mentally counted off the next few hours that she'd have to spend here before she could resume patrolling the streets for the night. It wasn't that she minded doing this kind of work; in fact it gave her a sense of purpose that the things she'd been doing all her life were finally starting to pay off in the matter of public wellbeing, but damn she hoped that those stupid pigs would go back to work soon, she was getting tired of this. Contrary to popular belief given her size and appearance, she did have a life and she would like to get back to it instead of playing Public Protector all night every night.

She had just leaned back against the bar counter to close her eyes for a minute when she heard a bottle break and somebody start yelling. She opened her eyes and saw that one of the barflies had gotten drunk and was trying to cut another guy's throat. Neither one of these two, Maude knew, fell under the innocent and helpless category, so she was tempted for a minute to just let the two of them have it out and see who killed whom first. But she knew there were too many bystanders surrounding them to let that happen, so she got up from her seat and went over to them. She grabbed the one wielding the broken bottle and knocked him back against the wall; apparently he'd already had too much to drink to have many reflexes because he just slid down the wall and crumbled into an unconscious heap.

Before Maude could get out the words she was thinking, 'too easy', somebody else jumped her from behind and before she knew it she had three other men, none as big as she was but all of them of considerable size, ambushing her and knocking her to the floor as well. Uncomfortable but not anything she hadn't already had to deal with before; she swung her leg up and kicked one man right in the face and knocked him against the jukebox, the front of the machine shattered and he was electrocuted on it. As the circuit shorted out and the man became a barbecued crispy critter, the rest of the bar was in hysterics and everybody was torn between trying to get out, and trying to kill whoever was responsible, which only led to everybody getting into a fight. Maude got to her feet and using her club, tripped the man's foot out from under him, causing him to fall and breaking the connection between his body and the source of his electrocution, he was still alive but she had other problems at that moment.

In a few seconds the bar had become a madhouse and everybody was fighting with everybody else, and right now who was what didn't matter anymore because they had all suddenly become capable of killing somebody if it meant getting them out of their way. Using her own judgment, Maude swung her club and hit people in the head, the ones who didn't seem to be as much trouble she only put enough strength in it to shake them up a bit, but the others who she was becoming an expert at spotting on sight, as being those who had no qualms about taking whatever was on hand and slitting somebody's throat, she swung her club back like a sledgehammer at the strength tester and knocked them in the heads so hard that their whole bodies spun around as they fell to the floor. Where she was concerned, it was a long, ridiculous process, she'd hit one and there'd be two more to smash. In the midst of this, Maude came face to face with the same fat man who she'd seen entering the bar earlier, and without taking the time to notice just how outrageous he seemed to be acting, she bashed him in the head and watched him drop like a shot from a gun. As big as he was he made quite an impact when he hit the floor and a few people felt it shake beneath their feet, like an aftershock.

Maude had only time to dispose of a couple other drunken idiots who were trying to kill her when she turned around and saw the fat man was back on his feet again.

"How the hell did you do that?" Maude asked, not waiting for an answer she swung her club and beat him in the head again and down he went again, this time as he went down, two other people tripped over him.

The man groaned and his eyes rolled back in his head but he shook it off and slowly got back up again, and this time before Maude had a chance to bunt his head like a fly ball, he grabbed the club and they were equally pitted against one another trying to get it away from each other. Maude gained the upper hand by kicking the man in the groin and he went down, but only for a second and he used that opportunity to grab her around her midsection and knock her off balance and they both tumbled onto the middle of the barroom floor.

"Get off of me you pervert," she said as she kicked him again.

"Pervert, eh?" the man replied as he grabbed her by her ankle and yanked her back towards him.

Maude used her free foot to kick him in the head and it knocked him flat on his back.

By that time they heard sirens outside and saw lights flashing, but of course it was only the paramedics come to take anybody who needed it to the hospital, this was becoming a routine stop for them over the course of the month.

"Alright, knock it off!" the fat man told Maude as he shoved her back, "What do you think, this is the World Series or something, eh?!"

"What the hell is the matter with you?" Maude asked, "How did you get back up?"

"I'm a very stubborn man," he sneered, and grabbed her tightly by the wrist and jerked her towards the door, "Come here."

"I'm not going anywhere with you," Maude said as she dragged her foot closest to him.

But the man was persistent and he jerked even harder and said in a more menacing voice, "Get over here."

He dragged her out the door and they walked past the parade of paramedics and onlookers and around to a dark alley where they were in something resembling privacy.

"You," he told her, "Are a very dangerous person, and very stupid."

"What would you know about me?" Maude demanded to know.

"I know plenty about your kind," the man told her, "I know if you keep making a spectacle out of yourself like you did tonight, then sooner or later you're going to get yourself killed, and I'm not talking about those idiots back at the bar."

"Then what are you talking about?" Maude sneered.

The man put his massive hands on her neck and shoved her back against the brick wall. A blinding pain covered the entire back of her skull and as she went down, everything went black.

He was still there when she woke up, standing over her, glaring down at her. Her head was still hurting but she thought it was odd how she couldn't feel the pain of getting her skull slammed against the wall anymore.

"What the hell did you do that for?" Maude wanted to know as she groggily got up, "Are you trying to kill me?"

The man looked down at her and said bluntly, "You were already killed, you just didn't know it."

Maude tried to see past her double vision and she asked him, "What the hell are you talking about?"

The man grabbed her to get her attention and told her, "Right about now your skull ought to be nothing more than a pile of powder rattling around inside of your head, but you're still alive."

"You're crazy," Maude told him.

"Not the first time I've heard that," the man replied, "I'm going to show you what I mean," and before she could see it, he took out a knife and slashed a deep cut into her forearm.

Maude let out a yelp at the initial pain and shoved him away from her, but she looked down and saw that something was wrong. What looked like little blue electrical sparks shot out of the cut as the wound closed itself up and disappeared. Maude looked back up at the man and asked him, "What the hell is that? What's happening?"

"You get headaches quite frequently," the man told her, "Always the same dull throbbing pain, always in the same place, no rhyme, no reason, nothing helps, nothing works, just comes and goes at random times."

"How did you know that?" Maude asked.

"It happens to all of us," the man told her, "In the beginning, some unwritten law, once you actually know about it, the pain fades out, but that feeling in the base of your skull remains. It comes and goes, as people come and go…you feel it now because I'm here, if I leave, then it leaves as well."

That had been the beginning of a very long conversation between the two of them, two hours later they were still in the alley, long after all the commotion around the corner had died out, only they remained.

"What you're saying is when I got knocked out during that first fight, I wasn't knocked unconscious, I actually died?" Maude asked.

"Mortally speaking, yes," the man told her, "Then you became Immortal."

"And all other deaths to follow, just temporary?" Maude asked suspiciously.

"So long as your head remains attached to the rest of you, yes," he answered, "If somebody cuts your head off, then it's all over, and it's permanent."

"And why should I believe you?" she wanted to know.

"Because you don't have any choice," he told her, "Eventually others are going to come looking for you and they're going to try to kill you."

"And there's nothing I can do about that?" Maude asked.

The man chuckled deeply and said, "As my brother always said, we live, we grow stronger, we fight another day."

"Your brother?" Maude said, "You said Immortals don't have any children, how do they have siblings then?"

"Not biologically," he explained, "And thank God for that too, I'd be lying to say I couldn't ask for a better brother but Mom would be too old by now," and he laughed again.

Maude stared him down and said, "You know something, fat man? You're not funny." At those words his laugh died and he glared at her. "You really mean to say that this is all real?"

"If it was not, could you otherwise explain what happened tonight?" he asked her.

She knew she couldn't.

"So what's your name?" she asked.

The man reached into his front pocket, took out an ID card and handed it to her.

"Cyrus Katczinsky," she read, and laughed dryly as she told him, "Funny, you don't look like no German."

"That's because I'm not," he told her.

"Oh yeah? So where do you come from?" Maude asked.

"Brooklyn."

"That figures," she said as she rolled her eyes, "What do you do?"

The man flashed a sinister looking grin and told her, "I'm a grave digger."

"How appropriate," Maude remarked.

Within a couple more weeks, the strike was over, the police were back on their beats, the bars were no longer as much a breeding ground for raw senseless violence as they had been, and Maude considered herself retired out of the vigilante business, for the time being. Unfortunately before the cops got back to work, she'd found herself having to put her club to very good use and wound up killing a few more sorry sons of bitches who never knew when to quit or walk away. Her new friend, Cyrus, had helped see to it that they were put six feet under before anybody could get too curious and ask too many questions. In the days to come she had seen quite a bit of him, it was hard not to since by general consensus they should've been a set of twins.

So far time hadn't helped this new idea about Immortals get any easier for her to accept or even to believe, even though she knew that it was true. Time and again Cyrus had reiterated that one day other Immortals were going to find her and come for her head and so had taken it upon himself to teach her what it would take to survive. That had been unnerving to say the least, struck her as being ridiculous to say a little more; she learned how to fight with a variety of different swords, as well as a couple of large axes. After every single training session, she still swore up and down that it was the dumbest thing she'd ever heard of in her life. Even when Cyrus had been right and people had come for her head, even after she'd taken her first head, nothing could change her opinion about the matter.

"So let me see if I got this right," she said to him one night for the umpteenth time since they met, "All the Immortals in the world are trying to kill each other in a game, that nobody knows how or where it started, or even if it's real, and they're all trying to be the last one standing so they can get a prize, that again nobody knows if it's real and what more, nobody even knows what it is?"

"That's about right," he told her.

"How many Immortals are there in the world?" Maude asked him.

"Nobody ever counted, but they must be in the tens of thousands," he said, "Unfortunately we're nowhere near as popular as the damn mortals."

"And they're all stupid enough to buy this line?" she asked.

"Whether or not they believe it is irrelevant, as long as everybody else does, the choices are damn few," Cyrus told her, "You can either fight and stay alive, or stick to your own beliefs and get killed."

"So then," Maude asked him, "Why haven't you killed me?"

That shut him up for a minute.

"You see?" Maude nodded, "You don't believe there's a prize, or you would've killed me the day we met, instead of explaining everything to me and then teaching me how to stay alive. If you believed there was a prize, you would've killed your brother centuries ago."

"Which one?" he replied.

"Which one what?" Maude asked, "You mean you have more than one brother?"

"Three to be exact," he answered.

"And they're still alive?"

"Should be, I've had no contact with them for the past few years but I doubt they'd let themselves be killed off now after surviving nearly 5,000 years."

"So how do we find them?" Maude asked.

He glared at her and asked, "Whatever for?"

"I want to see what these other three missing links are like," Maude told him, "If they're related to you then this ought to be one hell of a spectacle."