That’s How I Roll: A Novel (2 page)

If the government could look away from—well, you’ll see for yourselves—they’re even worse than the Beast they had kept on feeding for so long. If it wasn’t for me, they’d still be doing it.

here’s only two people on this earth I trust.

My little brother is one of those two, and he would never reveal who the other one is. All I had to do was say “secret” to Tory-boy, and
nothing
could ever make him tell it.

Maybe you’ll think badly of me when I tell you this, but I promised the truth, so I have to say how I know Tory-boy would keep anything I told him was “secret” to himself, no matter what. He was still very small when I started training him. As soon as I
thought he was ready, I hid some money—just a couple of dollars and some coins—and I told Tory-boy where I’d stashed it. Then I told him it was “secret.” And then I let it slip to Rory-Anne that I’d hidden some money.

She knew better than to try and make me tell, but Tory-boy was not even four years old. And she did things to him I can’t write down, not even here. Listening to my brother scream cut me so deep I don’t have the words for it. And knowing it was me who had caused those screams cut me deeper … cut me in a place I didn’t know I had. But I had to know. If Tory-Boy couldn’t keep a secret …

He wouldn’t tell. Three times, Rory-Anne tried. My brave little brother would not tell. Twice he passed out from the pain. After the second time, Rory-Anne came to me. She told me, straight out, what she was going to do to Tory-boy if he didn’t tell. Or if I didn’t. She wanted that money, and she was going to get it, even if she had to kill us both.

I looked her right in her degenerate eyes and said I didn’t know what she was talking about.

After that third time, she gave up.

That’s when I could finally hold my little brother. I begged his forgiveness. He didn’t understand what I was saying, but he knew—I
know
he knew—what I meant.

Tory-boy would never tell any secret of mine.

know things can just happen. And I know my Tory-boy. He could die in a car accident. Or get himself shot over nothing. Killed by the kind of man who’d lose a fair fight and back-shoot the winner as he walked away. Where we live, even the most diligent watchers couldn’t prevent something like that.

But the only one capable of detonating my last bomb,
that
person would know the difference.

f you are reading this, I have been betrayed. So this is being revealed to you, just as I promised. Revealed by someone I know would never betray me.

I have someone nobody knows of; someone not in the life I chose for myself. Someone pure. Someone who could deliver my last bomb with a clear conscience. To that person, delivering my message wouldn’t be informing; it would be doing the right thing.

They might decide to wait a good long while. That’s because they’re in this story, too—I couldn’t leave them out even if I wanted to.

But somehow I don’t believe it will happen like that. The person I am trusting with this wouldn’t
want
me to wait; they’d want me to show the whole world as soon as possible how I kept my word.

My last word.

know this all would be easier to understand if I started at the beginning and went from there. But the place where I was born, the place where I spent my entire life, it’s got a time rhythm all its own. It’s more than a dot on a map—it’s a living thing, as immune to the laws of physics as it is to the laws of man. Sometimes, things don’t happen in normal sequence. If you were born and raised there, you’d feel it, too. As if the earth itself stopped rotating in one direction, reversed itself, and then went back to the way it was turning before.

I don’t mean to say that this is the only such place on earth. I
know
there’s others. I can’t say how I know this, but I can feel that truth of knowledge inside me.

So I can’t tell my story any other way except how I’m writing
this down. The only way for me to tell the truth is to tell it as I experienced it.

I know I’m not helping you believe me, telling my story this way. But no matter how it may sound sometimes, this is no tale of magic; it is cold, hard fact. And if you read my story, you’ll know why I had no choice but to tell it.

his is how I saw it happening:

A mob of bears surrounded the hive, ripping at it like tall-timber chainsaws, desperate to get at the sweet stash of honey they knew was inside.

Bears chasing honey don’t worry themselves about filing environmental-impact statements. They know they don’t need any of those weasel-word excuses for tearing things up—nobody is ever going to call them to account. You could pass a dozen laws a day, it wouldn’t make any difference to them.

Legislation is just words. The real law is the law
enforcers
. It doesn’t matter what you call them—sheriffs, police officers, cops—those people, they’re the only true law.

But, for all that, they’re still not the ones in charge.

o matter how fierce the attack got, the hive stayed quiet. No swarm of drones rushed out, stinging, to protect the inner core. Layer after layer yielded to the slashing claws, but the core itself stayed untouched, as if in some impenetrable glass cage. The bears could see it, but they couldn’t touch it.

It didn’t matter to the bears what kind of stingers might be waiting on them. They knew honeybees weren’t close to the worst they might have to face. They knew all about hornets, mahogany wasps … all the way down to fire ants. All nest-guarders come
loaded with serious venom, and they’re always willing to spend every bit they have.

But that didn’t discourage the bears. For all they gave a damn, the hive could have been surrounded by five-pound scorpions. Those bears knew the value of that special core of honey, and they were ready to pay whatever it cost to get at it.

No matter what force was protecting that honey, they knew they could take the pain, walk right through it. What they didn’t know was that the greatest danger to them was that honey itself.

ees might succeed in discouraging a single bear, but they can’t kill one. They have the desire, but they don’t have the power.

Bears
can
kill each other, but they’ve got too much sense to do that. When mating season comes, if any two males catch each other’s scent, there’s going to be blood, sure. But that’s blood, not death. Soon as one bear realizes he’s not going to come out on top, he moves on.

You might think it’s their place on the evolutionary chain that gives bears that much sense. Sharks are natural-born killers, but they don’t have the intelligence to get out of the way when they’re facing something that could turn them into a meal. Even with the best electrical sensors on the planet, they can’t tell the difference between pieces of an abandoned ship slowly sinking to the ocean floor and a pod of killer whales with newborn calves.

Whatever drives sharks doesn’t have a reverse gear. The instant they pick up a trace of blood in the water, they go straight to whatever’s shedding that blood, and commence to ripping a chunk off for themselves.

That makes more blood. And that brings more sharks. Soon enough, they’re in such a foamy red frenzy that it doesn’t make any difference where the blood’s coming from … even from themselves. Before long, they’re all slashing blind. That’s not a good time to be a shark.