Three A.M.

by Steven John

  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 bi
rth 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.

  I rolled to a complete stop on top of the next hill. I was on the right road. I left my hands on the steering wheel and sat there, looking at Kirk’s dam.

  * * *

  I couldn’t believe that the whole complex was neither staffed nor monitored, but it seemed that was the case. I had driven to within a few miles of the dam and then pulled off the highway into a stand of trees. The truck would have been visible from the dam for a good fifteen, twenty minutes, yet here I was nearly at the foot of it unmolested. Fifteen years of inaction had bred extreme complacency. Or so I hoped. I leaned against a tree, smoking cigarettes and surveying the massive structure for almost an hour.

  When the sunlight was no longer on the fields, I grabbed a gray soldier’s jacket that had been folded on the shotgun seat and set out on foot. The trees on the highest hills were painted with the afternoon’s gold and the sky was still a pale blue, but soon it would begin to grow dark. The temperature was dropping. The dam was easily two miles away, and it was a tough trek to make before night fell. I needed to get there before that happened.

  I stopped and looked back several times, marking the spot where I’d left the truck in the trees. I could still see the outline of the vehicle and specific trees the first few times I looked back, but soon it was just a distant copse of gray shadows. I wondered at the lack of bullet holes in the back of the truck—it was like they hadn’t even tried to stop me. I hoped I could find my way back.

  I adjusted the rifle strapped across my back so the bolt would stop digging into my spine. I had a few additional clips of ammunition, a half pack of smokes, and my wits. I would need at least two of those. This was my one chance to carry out what I’d whispered to Fallon. I needed to get inside the structure to find its weakest point. Every work of man has its Achilles’ heel.

  My lungs burned as I pressed on toward the dam. Now and then, I had to slow to a walk and was racked by a hacking cough. I stumbled along slowly for a few feet and then willed myself to speed up again. There was a finish line at the end of this race—no more aimless drifting for me.

  The sky was the color of slate in the east and a swirl of violet and orange to the west when I reached the narrow river that started at the dam’s base. The land was formless and gray behind me, and even though I was now quite close to the structure, I was confident no one would be able to see me if they bothered to look. I jogged along the riverbank slowly enough to regain some energy. Ahead of me was a narrow, one-lane bridge that ran across the water, connecting the dam with a road that extended off into the hazy twilight. The sound of crashing water had gradually grown from a distant hum to a deep bass, a constant rumble.

  I slowed to a cautious walk as I neared the bridge and swung the gun down off my shoulder. I chambered a round as I reached the head of the bridge. It was a remarkably simple design: three concrete pylons sank down into the river, supporting a simple post-and-lintel-style stretch of concrete. There were no walls, and the bridge itself was perhaps ten feet wide. It was clearly built for an extremely low volume of traffic. The concrete was pale, shining like alabaster in the fading light. I hurried across it so my dark form would not long be framed against the white bridge.

  I was scarcely a hundred yards from one end of the massive, concave structure. It stood easily two hundred feet high, sweeping dramatically between two steep ridges. Water spewed forth from four large slots, each placed about halfway up the dam’s face. There were several tiers, each wider but shorter than the one below it. I moved off the service road itself but followed its path toward the structure. Above me, countless power lines, each as thick as my leg, stretched off into the distance. They crackled and hummed above, carrying power to my former world.

  It looked as though the road disappeared into the lowest level of the dam. That was where I needed to go. I needed to find its heart, to rip it out. Somehow.

  Moving quickly, I closed the distance between me and the large, cavernous door where the road ended. It gaped open like the mouth of a corpse, not caring who stopped to peer inside. I paused just outside the thick concrete walls and looked back over the twilight fields. Orion’s Belt shimmered in the heavens just above where I figured I had left the truck. I knew that the stars would would be moving all the time and before long I would have no way to know what direction to go. Taking a few quick breaths and clicking off my rifle’s safety, I walked into the gloom.

  * * *

  At first I could see nothing. The room was damp and musty, and the muted thunder of crashing water rumbled all around me. Far ahead was a pale, formless light issuing from somewhere, but I could not even see my hand in front of my face. I took slow, halting steps toward the distant light. My left hand swung back and forth before me, and I kept the gun barrel up and ready. My breathing was shallow; my skin cold and growing wet as sweat mingled with condensation.

  The ground beneath my boots was covered with loose bits of gravel and dirt, and it seemed that no one had traveled down this hall in a long time. The very air was stagnant and fetid. My vision slowly adjusted, and though I could see nothing in detail, some forms and shapes began to coalesce around me. The ceiling, some twenty feet above, was curved and covered in moldering tiles. There were light fixtures lining the tunnel, but they all looked to be broken and rusted. The soft light drifting down to me was coming from an open door seventy or eighty feet ahead. There were other doors here and there set into the walls, but all were iron, bolted and rusted shut.

  My feet crunched and slipped on the dirty floor, and I made my way forward slowly to keep quiet. The deep bass roar of water from above grew softer the deeper I went, and I figured I must have been heading into the center of the structure. I was only a few feet from the door—from the ethereal light. There was a large retractable grate set into the back wall next to the doorway. I leaned against the cold metal of the grate, secured the rifle against my shoulder, and pressed my right cheek down on the stock. One breath, and I stepped into the next room. There was no one there. But there had been. I had enter
ed a small, simple room, perhaps fifteen by fifteen. One wall was lined by old lockers, the kind that might be found in a gym. There was a door in one of the two walls, an identical retractable grate in the other. A small table sat in one corner. On the table lay the light source, a naked bulb connected to a simple handle and extension cord. Next to the light, there was an open book and a half-eaten sandwich.

  I walked over to the table and lowered my rifle, flipping the book over to look at its cover. The Adventures of Huckleberry Finn, by Mark Twain. I hadn’t seen or even thought of that book in twenty years. I set it down, open to page 110, where the reader had left it. I gently pressed my thumb down into the bread of the sandwich. It was still soft.

  “What the hell are you doin’?”

  I wheeled and dropped down to one knee, drawing a bead on the source of the gruff, scratchy voice. The old man’s hands flew up and he stumbled backwards, eyes wide above a hoary beard.

  “Hey! Hey, calm down, man! Jesus Christ!”

  “Who are you?” I kept the gun trained on him and rose to my feet.

  “I’m Hank Verlassen. I’m the operator! Why’s your goddamn gun out?”

  I lowered the weapon, realizing that he was not the least bit startled to see someone but rather confused to see someone armed and ready. I let out a sigh as if releasing tension and studied the man. He must have been in his late sixties. His skin was wrinkled and weathered, hands gnarled by a lifetime of work. His eyes were dark but vacant, set far back into his skull beneath salt-and-pepper brows. The blue uniform he wore was soiled and stained with oil.

  Verlassen took a step toward me once I had the gun off him. “What’s going on here, fella? Where’s your team?”

  “My what? Sorry … just a bit shook up here.” I had to buy time and fish for information from him without tipping my hand.

  “I heard choppers earlier but then no one came and then you show up alone and all trigger-happy—what’s the story?”

  “We had an accident. Everyone’s fine, but we had to put down a few miles away.” His eyes traveled up and down me, taking on a quizzical aspect as he noted my boots and blue jeans and jacket.