“She’s next.” And Fallon sat calmly beside that bastard. I fought back tears, thinking of them hurting her. Just a few more seconds, and maybe I could have snapped Watley’s trachea. Broken his skull against the floor.
Suddenly the room went pitch black. I heard the locks click and the door swing open. Someone entered, and then the door slammed shut. As quickly as they had been turned off, the lights came back on. It was Fallon. Still in his suit and dress shirt. He looked around the room, studying it as if for the first time. I doubted that it was, though. I stood, wincing and pressing the heel of my right hand to my temple.
“Nice suit,” I muttered.
Fallon took a step toward me and took in a breath to speak but let it out again.
I snorted and looked away, shaking my head. “Just tell me what to do next, kid. I don’t fucking care anymore.”
“I know the feeling,” he said quietly, his voice sad and distant. Slowly he unbuttoned his shirt halfway. Then he pulled it open. His chest was a covered in burns, bruises, and lacerations. I sucked in a breath. Most of them were older, nearly healed. A few looked fresh.
“What did they—?”
He quickly held up a hand to silence me. Fallon lowered himself into one of the two chairs, and after a standing still for a moment, I slid into the other across from him.
“Are we still in Science?” I asked.
“Not sure.” He shrugged, then leaned forward and turned his head ninety degrees. “I tried to help.” His crown was cracked and bloodied, just like mine.
“Thanks.” I put my elbows on the table and held my face in both palms. “Shouldn’t have doubted you. Sorry.”
“You were right to. They wanted to use me.” And I would have let them. He didn’t say it, but I knew he meant me to understand it. I didn’t begrudge him for it—she was his sister.
“The last time I saw her—” Again Fallon silenced me, this time emphatically, with both hands. He pointed to one ear and then gestured around the room, mouthing the words
everything … everywhere
. I nodded, understanding.
“So with plan A out—” Fallon pointed to the gash on his head. “—here’s their plan B: We’re each supposed to write out a declaration. Yours is everything that happened after the helicopter crash. And what you know about where Rebecca is.” He leaned back and reached under his jacket, pulling out a pistol and setting it on the table between us. “Have a look,” he said barely above a whisper.
I picked up the gun and dropped the clip free. One bullet. I reloaded the pistol and set it down. “Got it,” I said.
“Only one of us can leave alive.”
“What’s your deal, Fallon? Why are we even still alive now?”
He sighed, long and heavy, as if it were squeezed from his lungs by the weight of the world. Resting both elbows on the table and his chin between his palms, he looked up at me. “Until a few weeks ago, they still thought I was on their side. I think maybe I was. I grew to hate my dad, Tom. I thought he was a fool. An optimistic, rosy-cheeked fool. I became part of all of this. I … Jesus Christ…” His voice cracked and his face twisted into an awful grimace. He held his head in his hands.
“I was working on sterilizing people. That was my fucking assignment, and I took it. The water … medicines … I was sterilizing human beings.” He looked up at me again. His eyes were red and his lips trembled, but he held my gaze. “I thought I was right. I felt righteous, even. It took Dad’s fucking murder to show me I wasn’t. It all became very, very clear.”
I jumped as Fallon slammed a fist down on the table. “I was wrong! It’s all wrong. Now look at us.” He laughed sadly. “Just fucking look at us now.”
“Well, here we are. What do you think should we do?”
Fallon shrugged dismissively, his face saying he had no idea. He stood up and walked around the table, kneeling next to me and opening the drawer. He pulled out one of the sheets of paper and the pen and began writing:
Is she OK?
I took the pen and paused. I had been about to write that I didn’t know, but looking into his broken young eyes, I couldn’t do it. I nodded and set down the pen. He smiled, then tapped the pistol and began writing again:
That bullet is for me. There’s no reason for them to let me live so I’m sure they won’t.
His handwriting was small, even, and clear. Confident.
They still need you for something. Not sure what but something, so you can help her.
I looked over at him. Shook my head no.
How?
I mouthed silently. Then I wrote:
What could they need me for? I know nothing. I’m worth nothing. You’re her only shot.
He waved to cut me off, taking the pen.
You saw her last. You know more than them. Only reason you’re alive still.
Then, pointing to his chest:
Dead man.
Then to his head:
Know too much.
“Me too,” I muttered. “Just enough to be too much.”
“Maybe,” Fallon replied in a normal voice. “But Watley told me the door won’t open until that bullet is in one of our heads.”
I went for the gun. He must have anticipated my move because he sprang forward and swept it off the table. “Wait!” he shouted, a hand on my shoulder. I dropped back down into my chair. Fighting to kill myself—never expected that. He was right, though. They’d be fools to let him live. That was abundantly clear now. I still had the syringe in my pocket. Maybe we could go together. Or take someone with us.
He leaned over me again:
Under the porch stairs at Dad’s house are documents, photos, all of it. Laid out in detail. You need to live, Tom. No matter what it takes. How long it takes.
I sighed, my heart heavy.
When did you bury this stuff?
He spelled out:
Dad did. Last spring.
That’s what I had feared. “It’s gone, Fallon. They already got them.”
His eyes went wide; then his shoulders sank. “Jesus Christ,” he muttered.
“I’ve got a plan, though. Stupid long shot, but hey, why dream if you ain’t gonna dream big, right?”
Just then the locks clicked. I grabbed the sheet of paper and jammed it into a pocket as the door swung open. Watley entered, backed by two soldiers.
“Already got what, Vale?” I stared daggers at him. “What’s this plan? Already got what! What plan! Already got what, dammit!” he shouted, his shoulders quivering with fury. His cheek was gashed where my fingernails had caught him, and his throat was black and blue.
“All right. Fine.” He regained his composure and turned to one of the men beside him. “Kill Ayers.”
“Wait!” I yelled, leaping to my feet. Without hesitation, the guards raised their rifles. I got between Fallon and the guns.
“You’re just wasting time,” Watley said coldly.
“It’s okay, Tom. Let them get a clean shot, though.” Fallon laid a hand on my arm. I shook off his grip and dropped to my knees, grabbing the pistol from where it lay on the floor. I trained it on Watley.
“Go ahead. It won’t save either of you. Or her. Only I can do that. Now step aside so Fallon can say hi to his dad.”
I smiled. Then I put the barrel of the pistol under my own chin. “Still need me for anything, John?” I asked, my voice low.
He faltered.
“Figured.”
“You think this will help her, Vale?”
“Not sure. I know it won’t help you, though.” I held Watley’s gaze for a moment, then looked back at Fallon and gestured for him to lean in close. I put my lips near his ear and whispered.
He smiled. “Wouldn’t that be great.”
“Nice to think about,” I said. Then I wheeled to face him and pressed the pistol into his hands. “Send him along after me if you can, buddy.” With that, I ran one two three steps across the room and dived through the window, the glass shattering into gray.
* * *
Tall, lush grass softened my landing. It had been all of a four-foot drop. Utterly confused, I lay still, blinking in the bright sunlight. I was surrounded by shards of glass. A large sliver sat inches from my nose, and I could see that one side was painted gray. I rolled onto my back, returning to the moment as shouting came from the within the window. Watley and Fallon’s voices. The window was set into a simple one-story building. It looked like a long shed, with corrugated tin walls and a plastic roof. The building sat in the middle of a large field, bordered on all sides by dilapidated shops and houses.
I rose to my feet and made for the window when a shot rang out. The shouts turned to screams, and then seven or eight louder reports followed in two tight bursts. Rifle fire. I wheeled and ran along the side of the shed away from the gaping window. Around the corner, I found a third soldier scrambling to get out of a hole he had been digging. A slightly larger one sat finished beside it. Graves.
He froze when I came into view; I kept moving. There were two trucks idling behind the man, and against one rested a rifle. He tracked my trajectory a second too late and made for the weapon but slipped coming out of the grave, and then I had the gun in my hand. I ratcheted back on the bolt and trained the rifle at the man’s chest. Young guy. Drenched in sweat and with his mouth hanging open in fear. He was still holding a shovel, which he wrapped his hands around tightly and brandished at me.
“I’ve got a rifle; you’ve got a shovel. Fuck’s sake, man—start running.” Without missing a beat, he did just that. Tossed the shovel aside and hauled ass away from me back around the little building. I pumped a few rounds into the front and rear tires on one side of the first truck then ran for the second, throwing wide the door and jumping in.
Blinking monitors, a switchboard of toggles and buttons and complex, arcane gear cluttered up the dashboard, but fortunately there was still a good old steering wheel and gas pedal. I jammed the clutch in gear and shot off across the field, the door slamming shut with acceleration. No idea where to head, just away from the hail of bullets that was surely coming. Only as I shifted into third gear did I finally look up and realize that before me, not more than a mile away, sat the great gray city. Wrong way. I made a sharp turn to the right. The heavy truck rumbled across the uneven land, losing traction. I eased up on the wheel as the squat vehicle began to roll. I swung widely about and then pressed home on the gas pedal.
Heading west, I made for a wide gap between a white-walled church with a collapsed steeple and a cinder block warehouse. The engine roared as I mashed the gas pedal against the steel floorboards. I passed the church and pulled onto pavement. The street was pocked with cracks and holes and covered by debris, and the vehicle bucked and skidded but stayed true upon thick tires.
I needed to keep heading west. I tried to drive toward the setting sun, but at every turn I was blocked: a broken-down eighteen-wheeler here, a building collapsed across the street there. Many times I had to jam the unwieldy troop carrier into reverse and back up blind.
From the air, the sprawling suburbs had looked intact, whole. But up close, I could see that it was one big ghost town. Weeds had overtaken the pumps at a gas station. Most every streetlight and power line had toppled. Barely any windows still had panes. The few remaining doors hung from their hinges like beaten-down souls, too tired to carry themselves upright.
A flurry of memories assailed me as I realized a shattered edifice I’d flown by at fifty miles an hour was the movie theater where I’d had my first kiss. Erin Shuler. Some stupid horror flick.
Finally I found a broad, smooth street and I threw the stick into fourth gear—the top gear of this lumbering piece of shit. In the side-view mirror, it was a straight line back to a bridge across the river and into the city. Before me, I could see the highway. It looked intact. I sped up to seventy-three. The engine screamed and the whole truck rumbled and wouldn’t give me even a mile per hour more. I couldn’t be sure, but I thought as I sped past a run-down house with a sagging roof I’d seen two faces peering out from behind a curtain.
* * *
The better part of an hour had passed. I was several miles into the cleared zone. The skies were empty and the road behind me clear, but I was sure that at any second I’d see helicopters above or vehicles on the horizon. I’d kept the truck near top speed the whole time, rolling through the late-afternoon sun. The gas tank was more than half empty; I had to ease up. As I crested yet another hillock and slowed, from the recesses of my memory came a quote I’d read back when I still bothered to read. It was Aristotle, Socrates, or Plato—one of those three men who lived thousands of years before my birth and will be remembered thousands of years after my death. I kept trying to get the words right in my head but remembered only the notion: something to the effect of “We are what we repeatedly do; excellence is not an action, but a habit.” A habit of excellence. It sounded like a condemnation of my life: a forgettable childhood, an unwitting murderer as a young man, and then years stumbling around, making money by whatever means came easily to hand.
I remembered the family I had seen that day a couple weeks back on their way to church. I had judged them—derided them, even. God aside, at least they were trying to do something bigger with themselves. Even with all the misfortune that had been thrust upon us poor bastards, Eddie had opened a business; Salk worked a legitimate job and helped people out on the side. There were restaurants and stores in the fog. There were people in relationships. There was goodness.
I’d never considered myself corrupt, but I had become pathetically neutral, my moral compass twirling wildly according to each situation. I used to threaten and beat the only man I had called friend. I’d held knives to throats because someone offered me fistfuls of crumpled bills. I would have jumped Becca and shaken her up, scared her shitless, done whatever had been asked. She could have been just another bit of cash.
The thought that most frightened me was imagining who I would have been and what I would have done had I been one of the few chosen to be a part of the new order. If I’d been called into some briefing room fifteen years ago and told all the facts and been ordered into complicity, I can’t be sure I wouldn’t have said,
Yes, sir,
and laced up my boots. I’m sure Kirk and Callahan and all the rest felt justified and righteous in their pursuits. Maybe every bit as much as I did in fighting back. But I was right and they were wrong. I had to keep telling myself that. Samuel Ayers stood up. Fallon was surely now dead for trying. Rebecca saw the truth. No matter what might have been, this was where I had landed, and for once, I was determined to go all the way. To practice excellence—or try, anyway.