Runner Boy | Book 2 | Rider Kid
Page 23
Colonel Williams nods and says, “Thanks, Miles. You’re a stand-up guy. I sure hope this works out. I’d hate to have to face you in a war.”
“I won’t be fighting in any war,” says the captain. “Especially not one where I’m on the side of the fucking Russians.”
Colonel Williams nods, grabs me by the arms and says, “Let’s go.”
He starts walking back toward the cars, and Williams and I follow.
Parsons is holding one of the walkie-talkies, which is squawking. He holds it out toward the captain as we approach. “Doesn’t sound good,” he says. “They’re watching the bridges. Demonstrators in Covington, Newport, and downtown Cincinnati. People are pretty mad.”
“Yeah, I’ll bet the Russians are maddest of all,” says the captain, taking the walkie-talkie and holding it up to listen to what’s being said.
Parsons laughs and says, “What do you want to do?”
The captain shakes his head and walks a couple steps away to listen.
Williams says, “I want to drive the boy across the river. We can try to deal with him and the fallout over there.”
Parsons nods and looks at the captain, who walks back to us and says, “Lots of chatter, and half of it is in Russian. About the only thing I can understand is when they mention my name.” He looks at Parsons and says, “You look a little like the kid.”
Parsons looks at me and frowns.
I look at him and frown too. He doesn’t look anything like me.
The captain says, “About the same height, same color hair, or close enough.”
What hair? Parsons’s wearing a cop hat, and it looks like his hair is trimmed pretty short from the little that’s showing. My hair is falling onto my shoulders. I haven’t cut it much since the pulse, much to my parents’ dismay.
Continuing, the captain says, “I think you could pass for twenty.”
Parsons says, “Shit, Captain. I’m closer to forty than twenty.”
I add, “I’m seventeen.”
The captain says, “What do you think, Ben?”
Williams shrugs. “What do you have in mind?”
The captain explains, Williams says, “Let’s do it,” and the next thing I know, I’m exchanging clothes with Parsons. He gets my colonel shirt, which I make him promise to hold and get back to me some day, and I’m putting on his cop uniform. I get his cap and badge, but not his gun, unfortunately.
Colonel Williams and I drive off, with me in the front passenger seat, following the directions the captain gave us. Behind us, the captain is driving the other car with Parsons in the back seat. I don’t know how anybody will mistake him for me, but the captain says all anybody will see is a guy in the back seat of a police cruiser wearing a red flannel shirt. That should be enough.
We wind our way back down the hill, through a series of turns, and wind up on I-75, heading north. There’s a border check point at the foot of the Ohio River bridge, right in front of us as we pull onto the highway. A couple cars and a truck are ahead of us, as the four lanes are narrowed to one, and each vehicle gets stopped and checked. As we wait for our turn, I say, “What if this doesn’t work?”
“Then we’ll be fucked. But it’ll work.”
“But they’re looking for the captain too. And he’s right behind us.” I can see the other car behind us in line.
“Calm down. Miles said most of these border people are his people, so even if they spot him, they’ll let him go.”
I’m scared as shit. I don’t know what’s planned for me if we make it across to Ohio and the RNA, but nobody’s saying I’m not going to be punished for what I’ve done, and the punishment is probably pretty severe. Like, death. And that’s if I live past this border check, which looks pretty unlikely.
Finally, we’re first in line. A guard stops us as we ease up, and asks for identification. Another guard is standing just to my right, near the front of the car. Another is walking around the back of the car.
Williams tells the guard who he is, and adds that he’s investigating the shooting, trying to, “figure out what the hell this is all about.” He hands over his ID, but mine, or rather Parsons’s, is still in Williams’ hand. I’m pretty sure as soon as the guard looks at it, I’m screwed.
The guard looks over Williams’ ID. I try to keep my head down. I look out at my side mirror, and I can see the guard walking around from the back of the car up the side. He’s wearing a uniform, but not a cop uniform. More like military of some kind. He’s carrying an automatic rifle.
Oh, holy shit! The guard is Steph! He’s . . . what the hell. He’s a soldier? Whose side is he on, anyway? Fuck me. He’ll know me as soon as he sees me.
I look over at Williams, with as much panic in my eyes as I can convey without yelling, “Run!” I grab his leg, just as he hands Parsons’s ID to the guard. Williams looks at me. I nod toward the back, trying to communicate there’s a problem with the guard on my side.
The guard on his side opens Parsons’s ID.
Williams says, “There’s a couple more of our guys right behind us.”
The guard looks back at the car behind.
Steph is looking into the back seat of our car, checking to see if anyone’s hiding back there.
I’m trying to hide my face from Steph. I can’t breathe.
The guard on Williams’ side yells, “That’s Captain Wilkerson!” He shoves our IDs into Williams’ hands and moves toward the car behind.
Steph turns and looks back too.
Williams throws the car into gear and pulls away, more slowly than I would have liked. He’s looking into the rearview mirror.
I can see out the side mirror that Steph is running back to the captain’s car. He’s looking into the back seat, opening the door, pulling Parsons out.
Now he’s looking back toward us. Yelling at someone. Pointing our way.
Williams accelerates now, pulling into the right lane exit toward I-71N.
He says, “I hope those Russians don’t try to chase us over here. I’ll have some of my militia boys on their ass.”
I don’t know how he expects to contact any militia guys. And we’re driving a Covington Police cruiser at about seventy miles an hour, flying toward Columbia Parkway, just barely making the bend as we pass by the turn for I-471S, which would take us back across the river to Kentucky and the GSA.
Williams, who seems amazingly calm, says, “I hated giving up Miles like that. But I could tell you saw something you didn’t like.”
“No shit. One of the guards, the one with the automatic rifle, I know him. He’s one of the guys who got me into this mess in the first place.”
“You mean the Russian?”
“Russian?”
“That’s the uniform he was wearing.”
“Oh, fuck.”
“This is going to be one interesting story, I can tell.”
49
The day after the Pulse Anniversary
The interview room at District 2 looks just like the interview room in Covington, where I’d spent so many pleasant hours with the captain: pitch black when you’re wearing a hood, and not much brighter when they take the hood off, since there are no windows. Williams had put the hood back on me before we went inside—to protect my identity, he said.
As the hood is removed I blink, trying to see who’s in the room with me. A uniformed woman enters the open door and hands something small to the man who’s still holding my hood in one hand. He flips the hood onto the table standing in the center of the room and puts the small device on the table, twisting it as he does. It emits a small amount of light. Not much more than a night-light, but better than nothing.
The woman exits, shutting the door, and the man tells me to sit down. I do, with difficulty, as my hands are cuffed behind my back. When he sees that he says, “Sorry. Stand up.” Again, not that easy with hands cuffed behind. But I manage, and he uncuffs me.
Before I can sit again, the door opens and Colonel Williams comes in. He’s fol
lowed by a woman.
Oh, Jesus, it’s Rachel. She sees me and darts around the table with her arms out, wrapping me in a vice grip when she reaches me. She’s crying. Shit. I’m crying. I never expected to see her again, I realize. Neither of us says a word. We just stand, wrapped in each other, crying like babies.
When I open my eyes, I see another person in the doorway. It’s Rob. Jeez. Now I’m crying more. We hug too.
Williams closes the door and gives us a couple minutes to get our crying done. Then he says, “Okay, let’s all sit down, shall we?”
Rachel sits in a chair beside mine, Rob pulls one up to the end of the table, and Williams sits opposite me. He says, “I’ve learned quite a bit about what happened from these two and from Captain Wilkerson’s people. Now, I want to hear it from you.”
“But,” I say. “How did they get here? And why?”
Williams looks at Rachel and says, “Go ahead.”
She sniffles and tries to wipe her teary face with her hand. I offer her my sleeve, and she holds my arm and rubs her face across it.
“It all seemed so wrong,” she said, sniffling again. “You going alone. I felt so, so guilty. I wanted to stop you, or at least be with you. So Rob and I got Mom’s old Ford Probe, got gas from a couple people, and came here early yesterday morning.” She’s sobbing again.
Rob says, “We’d heard about the big speeches in the Bengals stadium, of course. The whole downtown area was crowded with people, even hours before the celebration was supposed to start. We found a place to park in a big lot not too far from the stadium. Then we walked across the big bridge, the blue one, and looked around, hoping to spot you.”
Rachel picks the story up again. “You’d told me your plan, so I knew you’d be going into one of the hotels there. I didn’t know for sure which one, but I figured the taller one. We wandered around for a long time, but never saw you.”
“I wanted to be in the stadium for the speeches, to hear them myself, so we split up,” says Rob. “I was half-hoping you wouldn’t do anything, and half that you would.”
“I kept looking for you,” says Rachel. “Even after I knew that the speeches had started. I was standing on the street between the two hotels when I heard the shot.” She closes her eyes for a second. “I screamed, and ran toward the river. You said you were going to get picked up in the hotel parking garage. One of the hotel’s garages was closed—”
“Neither hotel is operating,” says Williams.
“But the taller hotel’s garage was open. I’d seen two big black SUVs go in there earlier. So I stopped and watched, thinking maybe you’d come out that way.”
“Yeah, I did, but things didn’t go quite how I’d planned,” I say.
“Tell him what you saw,” says Williams.
“It was dark in the garage, but I’m pretty sure Jerry’s friend came out a door of the hotel and got in one of the SUVs, and they drove off.”
“Jerry’s friend?” I ask, confused. “You mean Steph?”
“No, the other one, Len,” she says. “I’m pretty sure I saw that big scar on his head.”
“Wait. Len’s been missing since Shanna was killed. He was grabbed by the Red Hats and taken away.” This isn’t making sense.
“Maybe not,” says Williams. “He’s a sniper, that right?”
“Um, yeah,” I say. “It was his gun I had.” I turn back to Rachel. “So did you see me?”
“Yes, you came out just a little later. I knew it was you. I got so excited. And then a man walked up to you and smashed you in the face with his gun. I screamed again, but I don’t think they heard me. I thought you might be dead. They just threw you in the other SUV and drove out. I ran after it. I don’t know why. I couldn’t have done anything if I’d caught it. But it only went a couple blocks and turned in to the Justice Center. And the other SUV went in the same place.”
“The Justice Center is mostly courtrooms. It’s close, there are some cells in the basement, and no one would think to look for you there,” says Williams. “Now, dear, tell him what you did next.”
“I knew something wasn’t right,” she says. “What was Len doing there? Why did they hit you in the head? So I went looking for Rob.”
“We had arranged to meet at the foot of the bridge, on the Cincinnati side,” says Rob. “But everything was in a panic. People running every which way. It was obvious somebody got shot up on stage, but I was pretty sure it wasn’t President Pounds. I saw him being hustled out of there by some guys. I didn’t know it was Bowers who got shot, but I thought it might be.
“Anyway, there were Red Hats and cops and military people all over the place. People running for their lives. It took a long time for me to get to the bridge.”
Rachel says, “It took me a long time too. The bridge was jammed with people, going both ways, but mostly trying to get to the Kentucky side, so I was against the flow. There were too many people, and the border check point just got overrun. They stopped checking people.”
“We finally met up, exchanged what we saw, and agreed that something wasn’t right. I mean, if you had shot Bowers and got caught for it, so be it.” Rob looks as Rachel as he says that, knowing that she might not agree with him. I don’t know about her, but that sounds right to me. I deserve to be caught and punished.
Rob continues, “But we both know that something’s wrong. You wouldn’t shoot Bowers. Why would you? I’d seen Colonel Williams in the stadium. I thought he might still be there, and we decided to try to find him.”
“They came up to me on the field of the stadium. Told me what they’d seen. I brought them here. Okay?” Williams seems like he wants to get to the part where I tell my story.
So I do.
50
The day after the Pulse Anniversary
As I finish my story with my sighting of Steph wearing a Russian uniform, Rachel is clearly pissed. “They played you,” she says. “They played all of us. For fools.”
“We are fools,” says Rob.
“You three can debate that all you want,” says Colonel Williams. “I’ve got some work to do. I’m locking you in here. You’re all guilty of something, and I’m not about to set any of you free. I’ll send in some food and water, but I’m leaving word with the officers here that if any of you try to leave or cause a disturbance, they are to use force, deadly if necessary. Got it?”
So we sit in the semi-darkness, the only light the little night-light thing, and wallow in self-pity. Rachel is pissed because I’ve been tricked into ruining my life. Rob wonders who really killed Shanna.
And I wonder how big the conspiracy is. Who else is responsible for sucking me in, for thinking I was doing the right thing? Jerry, almost certainly. If Steph is a Russian, and Len is the sniper who shot Bowers, and they were both Jerry’s friends, well, the conclusion is obvious. But what about Flip? Jake? No, Jake couldn’t be. He must have been tricked like me. Or was he? I don’t remember him ever saying I should shoot anybody. What about the rest of the resistance? The people in Indianapolis? Shanna? No, not her. She was killed, probably because she wasn’t one of the conspirators.
Rob is convinced, though, that the need for action was real. Wilson really was thrown into a camp because he was gay. He really was killed trying to make Pounds’ life more difficult. His death is not on the conspirators. They, the conspirators, capitalized on the passion of some of us in the resistance. By some of us, I mean me. My passion and my stupidity led me here, to this little room, locked in, facing an uncertain future. It’s on me.
We get food and water. I can’t even remember the last time I ate. The cold vegetable soup, served in metal bowls, is about the best thing I’ve ever eaten. Not really, because I barely taste it going down, but man, am I hungry. The cops who bring it to us give us seconds. I love them for it.
We sit locked in for several hours, relieved only by the food break and a couple restroom breaks. Finally, Colonel Williams returns.
“Let’s go stop a war,” he says.
Colonel Williams leads us out to a car, but not before cuffing me and hooding me again. I’m jammed into the back seat with Rachel on one side and Rob on the other. A tight fit, especially with me having my hands behind my back.
“Here’s what’s up,” says Colonel Williams. “In about a half hour there’s going to be a press conference. There were lots of reporters in town because of the big show yesterday, with two presidents scheduled to talk. Of course, that didn’t go quite as planned, did it Brady?”
“No sir. I expect not,” I say.
“There’s probably even more reporters here now, after the shooting. This is now ground zero for the impending civil war.”
“Why civil war?”
“Well, it seems that a president of one country has been assassinated by someone from another country, and that first country is about to declare war as a result. I know I said civil war, but that’s because both these countries are, or were, part of one larger country just a year ago. Got it?”
Rachel asks, “So have they declared war yet? Is it too late to do anything?”
Williams answers, “There have been some skirmishes here and there, but no official declaration yet. News doesn’t travel fast these days, so we don’t have anything official from the government of the GSA, only some threats from a bunch of Russian thugs who are here across the river.”
“Who can declare war? Is there a new president of the GSA now?” asks Rob.
“Good question. Bowers never had a vice-president that I know of. Just his family. So I don’t know, maybe his oldest daughter? We’ll have to see who responds.”
I say, “So the big question is why. Why would the Russians shoot Bowers, who’s a friend and ally? And then blame it on me?”
Williams coughs, or laughs, it’s hard to tell which. “That is a question for someone smarter than me. Foreign policy and international relations are not in my purview. Right now, all I’m trying to do is get you to a place where you can stand in front of a bunch of reporters from around the world and tell them your story. After that, who knows?”