“The blind leading the blind,” I said with a bitter smile. “Well, I guess he just sensed a change in the air.”
He looked ready to retort but instead continued calmly. “Anyway, when it’s all over, years from now, there will need to be records of certain people who lived both on the inside and outside. Certain of those records wouldn’t reflect too kindly on me, on Watley. Remember, in the eyes of the powers that be, we’re the good guys. If you weren’t so obtuse, maybe you’d understand. No matter. We forced a pretty girl to plant an idea in your head. Figured maybe you’d let some facts slide about your other case to her. It turned out that you basically didn’t know anything, but that’s beside the point.” He chuckled softly. “You were close, that’s the point. Some of the pictures and documents you took from that warehouse; if you’d had any idea what you were looking at…” He set down his glass.
“Samuel Ayers is one of the few people who lived in both worlds and will have a historical record, you see. It will be about his work studying the atmosphere in the exclusion zone. Samuel Ayers’s record will end stating that he was killed in his own home by a disgruntled soldier named Thomas Vale.”
I sucked in air, and Kirk looked up at me; then his gaze shifted and I realized Callahan was standing in the doorway. “We should get moving,” he said gruffly.
“True enough,” Kirk said, checking his gold and silver wristwatch. “I hope this has been informative if less than pleasant, Tom.” He began to rise.
“Wait a second, Kirk. Allow me three more questions.” He lowered himself back down and looked at me attentively, raising one palm and gesturing for me to proceed.
“The exclusion zone—how big is it? How far away is … everyone? Everyone else?”
“It’s about a two-hundred-mile radius. Outside that, life starts up again rather abruptly. It gives me a slight shock every time, to be honest. Next. And hurry, please.”
“Why was Ayers killed, and what’s next for me?”
“The first question doesn’t concern you. The second, you’ll know very soon. We need you for one more thing, Vale.” He stood up quickly and walked over to where I sat, picking up my jacket and tossing it onto my lap. I didn’t move.
“It doesn’t concern me? Doesn’t concern me, Kirk? I’d say it does. I think it concerns me very, very much. Profoundly, even.”
He stood looking down at me, his face cold. In his dark eyes, there was no flicker of compassion. There was only the hard gaze of a scientist working out an equation. “Perhaps my word choice was poor, Vale. But we’re out of time. So go ahead and be concerned, but stand up. I didn’t have to tell you a thing, but instead I told you everything. You want to find out what’s next? Let’s go.”
I stood up and faced him. My heart began to beat more rapidly as I stared at Kirk, the slight hint of a sneer on his calm, composed face. His suntanned face. All that I had just learned churned in my head, and my anger grew. Turned to fury. It was academic for Anthony Kirk: just facts and problems to be solved with hydroelectric power and fog stacks and glowing orbs and all the rest of it. Not so for me. Not so for all of us. He held my gaze. My parents. My time. Any chance for happiness. My life.
I slowly pulled on my jacket. As I did, Heller’s cassette slipped from the pocket. Chopin. The tape bounced off the carpet and came to rest between my rough brown leather boots and his polished black wingtips. He looked down at the tape, bemused. I knelt to pick it up, my eyes on his face.
Something deep inside me cracked as my left hand closed around the tape. Kirk smiled down. My chest tightened, and before I knew it, my right hand had curled into a fist. The backs of my fingers trailed across the carpet. My torso began to twist as I rose. Fifteen years of stumbling through the gray compressed into one action as my fist began its arc up from the floor. Kirk’s eyes widened the instant before I hit him. I struck with every fiber of my shaken soul.
My hand connected just below his cheekbone. The punch was so hard, his feet left the floor and he hung parallel with the ground, falling, eyes rolling back, until he landed in a pile, head first, then feet, then the rest of his dead weight. I stood over him and then heard the crackle of Callahan’s prod. He jammed it into my back. I went down to my knees and then it was on my neck. Then my cheek, my knees, my balls. I was curled into fetal position, screaming, howling, mucus flowing from my nose and blinded by tears. He just kept coming. Nailed my crotch again, the bastard. Then he kicked me savagely in the back and I rolled over, my face inches from Kirk’s.
He was conscious, but just barely. His eyes focused briefly on mine, and even as Callahan jammed the shocker against me one last time, I smiled at Kirk. His eyes closed.
* * *
They had cuffed me before leading me from the house. Kirk was unsteady on his feet as we walked past the lengthening shadows on the soft green grass. Callahan shoved me roughly into the back of the helicopter, handing Kirk his prod once he was seated across from me. Already his face was swollen and bruised. I hoped I had damaged his teeth. Better yet a concussion. He kept his jaw shut tight, his eyes on mine.
Callahan got the helicopter powered up, and in a few minutes we lifted off. I leaned against the window and looked down at the verdant fields as we rose ever higher. Kirk leaned forward and whispered, “Take your last look, Vale.”
“Oh, let’s not let a little thing like your jaw get in the way of our friendship, Tony.”
He leaned back again, looking away. Through clenched teeth, he rasped, “I said we needed you for one more thing. That thing is your corpse.” He faced me again. “Take your last look.”
Maybe he was right. I pressed my face to the window and took in the beauty below me for a good long time. The sun shone through the glass and warmed my face. From above, the trees formed a palette of orange, red, and yellow. The sky was still deep blue. The fields were vast and green, and far off in the distance I saw the familiar sprawl of houses and shops and offices—of life. If it was going to be my last look, I was determined to make it theirs too.
No going softly into that dark night, Tom.
I smiled to myself, squinting in the sunshine. The anger and bitterness I felt just minutes before were replaced by profound resignation. At least there had always been a world out there. At least others had felt the sun on their shoulders or the grass beneath their feet. I took what was possibly to be my last look and then turned, calmly, deliberately, and faced forward.
Kirk was looking out the other window, paying no attention to me. The soldier was nodding off. It was time. I took two deep breaths. Then I leapt forward, slamming one knee into Kirk’s chest as I threw my arms around Callahan’s neck.
It all happened fast. Kirk coughed for air, and again I hit him with my knee, this time in the face. Callahan’s fingers clawed at the short length of chain between my wrists, and I leaned left to slide my right leg between the seats, firmly planting my foot on the stick and jamming it forward. The aircraft shuddered and then began dropping violently, rolling forward and to one side.
The soldier came to in a panic and fumbled with his rifle.
“Too late, asshole!” I shouted with joyful madness. Too late. A grating whine filled the cabin as the motor strained and then failed. Then only the sound was men shouting dampened by howling wind. The ground rushed up to meet us. I looked back and saw Kirk’s eyes wide with terror, and then there was a dull crunch and then silence.
10
Gasoline—its odor curling around me. All was silent save for an occasional drip. I was in no pain. I could see nothing. The fetid smell grew ever stronger. Liquid dripped onto my forehead. Slowly the world went from black to dull red. Rust colored. Then a bit of pain. Just in two places, really: both wrists. Then I snapped awake.
I was hanging by my wrists, the cuffs still wrapped around Callahan’s lifeless neck. My feet hung past the back bench. I stepped onto the backrest to ease the pressure on my wrists and then gingerly raised the handcuffs off Callahan’s corpse and over his seat. Slumping down onto the back of the bench seat, I was very near Kirk. His body was bent double at the waist, neck twisted, and one leg stuck out at a horrible angle. Not that it mattered. He looked good and dead.
The skin of my forearms was ragged and bloody. Everything worked, though; I made fists and wriggled my fingers. The helicopter must have rolled at least twice—the tail section was gone entirely and the cabin was resting with its windshield pointed directly up at the sky. The glass on the right half of the cockpit was all missing, as was the soldier who had presumably been thrown clear.
I was still in a daze, my thinking cloudy, but the gasoline worried me. I had to get out. Again my eyes fell upon the man in the dark suit. “Are you dead, Kirk? Huh?” I kicked at his torso, my toe connecting roughly with his ribs. It felt divine. I kicked him again. And again. Ribs cracked. “Are you dead, asshole?” He was. Very much so. I dropped back down onto the seatback, coughing and sucking in ragged breaths.
I tried the cabin door but the latch was bent and it wouldn’t budge. After a few solid kicks, I got the door open and crawled outside, lowering myself gingerly onto the grass. New pain seeped in. Both legs, the left side of my chest and my neck. I had a dozen little cuts where shattering glass must have caught me. But I was alive. I walked in a circle around the destroyed chopper and was amazed to be so.
The rotors were gone. The tail lay a good fifty feet away. The skids were bent, the engine nearly ripped off the top. It was bent, cracked, and dented all over. I found the soldier lying facedown about thirty feet away. The massive patches of crimson on his gray fatigues left little doubt that he was dead, but I turned him over anyway. He still bore the shocked expression of his last living moment; his eyes were wide open, mouth agape. Poor son of a bitch. It could just as well have been me if things had been different. He was just doing what he was told.
I could see Callahan’s round, dead face through the glass on the side of the craft. His eyes bulged out and his yellow teeth were bared beneath curled lips. His neck was ripped to shreds where I had hung from it. There was blood on my jacket—must have been his. I wiped at my face and my hands came away streaked with crimson. The handle on the pilot’s side door was just within reach if I stood on my tiptoes. I tugged at the latch, and the door popped open. Carefully placing one foot on the open frame of the rear door, I pulled myself up to stand eye to eye with the dead man.
His body was stiff beneath his clothing as I dug through his pockets. I found the keys to the handcuffs in his pants and jumped back down onto the soft grass. I freed myself and tenderly massaged my wrists, looking up at the purple blue sky. The last rays of sunlight were just leaving the distant hills. The air was cool, fresh—amazing.
I took the rifle and, rejoicing at my luck, three packs of cigarettes from the soldier.
Thanks, brother.
I nodded as I straightened out his limbs so that he could lie in some manner of repose. He had a small kit that I looked through briefly—some water, ammunition, a pocket knife, a walkie-talkie that had cracked nearly in half, and a few protein bars. Not much, really, but better than nothing. I peered into the ever-darkening cabin to see if there was anything that looked useful, but the acrid stench of fuel was much stronger now. I could see a small pool of gas collecting on the back windows.
I retreated to a safe distance to light a cigarette. I smoked about half of it, staring at the shattered tomb of a helicopter. Then I ratcheted back the bolt on the rifle and clicked off the safety. It was the same model they’d handed me a decade and a half ago. Aiming into the air, I let fly a single round: a salute for all of us these bastards had left behind. Then I trained the rifle on the ruined helicopter and began firing. The engine exploded on the eighth shot, and flames engulfed the craft. I took one last drag from the cigarette, threw it down, and set out walking toward the hills.
The sky was now a brilliant canvas of colors, stretching out from the western orange purple end of day to the eastern blue gray of night’s approach. I started humming Beethoven’s Ninth.
One by one, stars crept through the shimmering canopy above.
* * *
True darkness. The sky between the thousands of stars was black. I could scarcely see my hand in front of my face, much less the lay of the land. As night had taken over, I picked a cluster of stars as my beacon and followed them diligently for hours as they crept away across the night sky.
As it had gotten darker and more stars winked to life above me, I nearly lost my little constellation many times before the firmament once again grew familiar. The sky that I had not seen in fifteen years was helping me along my way. Before it all, I had never once navigated by the heavens, never even thought to. Now after all these years, I was back to the elemental ways of things. For all that time, the stars had hung above me, waiting for the chance to help.
It must have been horrifying, I thought while stopping to rest, to have journeyed through the night in the past. The sailor adrift in the middle of the ocean at the mercy of the wind and guided only by the brilliant map above must have lived in constant fear. He too could be ruined by fog. If mist obscured the stars above, he was lost. If he strayed too far from his course, he may never have found his way again.
But I had emerged from the fog. I had my stars before me and I followed them on my course. It was a cold night, but it was an honest cold. The chill wind was biting but crisp. There was no moisture in the air, and even while shivering I relished the night. But my fingers were growing numb and my joints tight, and I knew I could neither stop for long without a fire nor continue on all night without rest.
I decided to walk awhile longer before settling in for the night. I had no idea if others would come looking for me. The thought of being missed was darkly amusing—no one had much thought of me in … ever. Now here I was, as alone as I could possibly be and surely more sought-after than ever before in my life. Watley was probably sitting at a large oak conference table right now, discussing Kirk’s failure to return. I expected to hear helicopter blades slicing through the air any minute.