The truth of the matter h-3

by Andrew Klavan

  What was it? What had I been thinking?

  I looked around, trying to recapture the half-formed thought. My gaze fell on the chest, the empty chest. Something… Something had been there…

  And then I saw the tray. The tray that had had the sandwich on it. I’d taken it off the chest when I’d opened it. I’d set it on the floor… There was something about the tray, something on the tray…

  It all came back to me.

  A flash of pain went through my forehead as I reached down and picked up the 3 x 5 index card Waterman had left for me with the food and water. I had to shut my eyes a moment until the headache passed. But a moment later, I forced my eyes open. I reread the message written on the card:

  Eat. Drink. Build up your strength. You’re going to need it.

  And then, at the bottom, that symbol instead of a signature: that simple stick-figure house, a square with an X inside and a triangle for the roof.

  Why would Waterman sign the note that way? That was the thought that had come to me just before the memory attack knocked me down. What did the symbol mean? The answer had been coming to me when the seizure hit and drove me to the floor and back into the past.

  It occurred to me that he must’ve been trying to tell me something. Why else sign with a symbol instead of his name? And what else could he have been trying to tell me except how to get out of here?

  I remembered how I’d watched him passing his hand over the secret doors. I remembered the pattern had been all straight lines and diagonals. Just like the little house- the straight lines of the walls, the diagonals of the roof and the X inside. Waterman must’ve been passing me the code just in case-just in case the Homelanders arrived- just in case he had to escape and couldn’t help me.

  That’s why he didn’t explain it. Why he didn’t write it out. He was afraid they might be watching, maybe even afraid they had someone inside his organization. I didn’t know. But since that little house symbol was the only hope I had-the only idea I had-I figured I better try to do something with it-now, before Waylon’s bomb went off.

  I moved to the wall again. I was about to put my hand against it, when I hesitated. I pressed my ear against the wall instead. I didn’t want to get out of here only to walk directly into the guns of the Homelanders. I listened. There were no voices out there now, no one talking. The place was empty-or it sounded as if it was empty anyway.

  I backed off. I put my palm on the wall, the way I’d seen Waterman do it. I traced the shape of the house. The square base. The X inside. The triangle of the roof.

  Nothing. No motor noise. No sliding door.

  I licked my dry lips. My heart was sinking. I could almost feel the seconds ticking away. I tried again. Again, nothing. Maybe the door had some kind of secret sensor that read Waterman’s fingerprints or his DNA or something.

  But then why leave me the symbol?

  I thought back to when I’d seen Waterman make the sign over the door. I could see there was a pattern. It was always the same pattern-the lines and diagonals. But there was something else as well. He had always done it in one smooth, flowing motion, never breaking off, never moving his hand and never retracing any of the motions he’d already made.

  There must be a way to draw the little house with the X inside in one motion without lifting my hand from the wall.

  I tried it. No, I had to go over one line twice. I tried it again. Then again. I couldn’t make it happen. Every time, I had to retrace one of the lines. And every time I was done, there was no motor. No door.

  I stared at the pattern on the card. There had to be a way. Waterman did it. I could do it. He wouldn’t have given me the symbol if it didn’t work. I had to believe that or there was no hope.

  I tried again. I traced a diagonal across the wall. Another one. Another. Wait, this time it was working. A straight line, drawing the house. Then-yes!-only one more line. I did it. I finished the whole thing without retracing my steps.

  And immediately, there it was. The grinding engine in the wall. The panel slid back in front of me.

  The door to the Panic Room was open. I was free.

  I stepped out into the main part of the bunker-and the first thing I saw was the bomb.

  It was sitting in plain sight, right there on one of the workstations. It was a large cube made of several blocks of some kind of brown putty. Explosives. I’d seen stuff like that on TV. There was a device and wires wrapped around the putty block. There was a timer there with red numbers quickly blinking away.

  Six minutes and fifteen seconds left before the bomb exploded; 6:14… 6:13… The numbers clicked swiftly down.

  That was the first thing I saw. The next thing I saw was the Homelanders.

  A movement caught my eye. I turned toward it. Something was moving on one of the monitors hanging on the wall. It must have been displaying the video readout from a security camera posted in the ruins above.

  I could see by the video that the dawn was breaking outside now. There was a clear view on the monitor of some of the broken pillars and ruined buildings standing in the morning mist. I could see the Homelanders moving among them. Searching through them.

  They were searching, I knew, for me.

  I turned from monitor to monitor. Each one showed a different portion of the scene outside. Each one showed different ruined buildings, different columns and empty arches and patches of fog snaking through them, twining around them. Each monitor also showed one of the Homelanders.

  I counted six of them altogether. Each one carried a machine gun. They moved slowly through the ruins, their heads turning this way and that, their eyes scanning the area.

  All except one. One stood still. He held his gun with its butt propped on his hip, the barrel pointed to the sky. I recognized the place where he was standing. He was right outside the brick cylinder that protected the entry. He was guarding the only way out of here. He was making sure I didn’t escape.

  So down here, the bomb was ticking-six minutes and one second now… 6:00… 5:59… 5:58…

  And up there, the Homelanders were patrolling and guarding the way out.

  If I stayed in the bunker, I’d be blown up. If I tried to leave, I’d be shot.

  I looked at the bomb on the table again. For a moment I wondered if maybe I could just disconnect the wires and defuse it. But somewhere in the bottom of my mind was the absolute certainty that the device was sensitive to the touch. Maybe it was something I knew from my training with the Homelanders. But however I knew it, I felt very sure if I even touched the device, it would go off then and there.

  So that was what I saw: first the bomb… then the Homelanders on the monitors patrolling the ruins outside… And then…

  Then I turned to look around the room, to search for another way out or for a tool or weapon I could use in a fight-and I saw something else.

  On the threshold of the doorway into the next room, there was a puddle of blood.

  The breath came out of me with a trembling “Oh!” I had a terrible feeling I knew what I would see if I went into that room.

  But I had to go. I had to see. I had to know what was there.

  I started moving. As I came closer, I saw a trail of blood leading away from the puddle, leading into the other room.

  And then I came closer and I saw a hand-one outstretched hand lying on the floor.

  And I came closer. Closer to the door. I saw the arm attached to the hand. I reached the doorway and looked in.

  That’s when I saw the body.

  It was Waterman.

  He was lying on his face in the middle of the floor of a room that looked like a small lounge. One arm was tucked under his torso. The other was outstretched, the hand pointing to the doorway through which I’d just come. Beneath his head, there was another pool of blood.

  I rushed to him. I knelt beside him. I felt his neck for a pulse. There was none.

  He was dead.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  Time Running Out The world seemed to
spin around me. I thought the jolt was going to overwhelm me. Waterman dead. Executed by the Homelanders while I lay unconscious and undiscovered in the Panic Room.

  And all the others? Gone. Escaped? Dead? I didn’t know.

  I stood up and staggered back to the door. I leaned heavily against the frame.

  Waterman was dead. My contact. My ally. The only ally whose name I knew. Even if I managed to get out of this death trap alive, where would I go now? Who would I turn to for help?

  A wave of hopelessness washed over me. I felt as if all my strength had drained away. For a second or two, I actually thought I wouldn’t be able to move again.

  But there was no time for that. No time to indulge that sort of emotion. The bomb was ticking. I had to keep going, had to. Waterman was dead. All right. That’s the way it was. He had died trying to protect America from its enemies-trying to protect liberty from its enemies. A lot of people have died that way in a lot of places over the years. God knows their names-every one of them-I believe that-but they’re beyond my help. The only thing I could do was go on, never give in, keep fighting the fight they fought.

  I pushed off the door. I forced down my dizziness and sickness. I felt something flaring up inside me, a new heat, a new fire of determination. I knew I had only minutes to live. But I was going to use every one of them. I was going to do everything I could to get out of here, to find help, to find someone who would believe me when I told them about the Homelanders, to find someone who would help me stop them, help me bring them down.

  A new bolt of pain went through my head, and for a second I was afraid another memory attack would knock me over. I couldn’t let that happen. I massaged my brow with my fingers, trying to think. My eyes went to Waterman’s body one more time. The pool of blood. The outstretched hand… I wondered…

  As much as he could, Waterman had tried to watch out for me, to think of me and my safety. He had brought me to this bunker in the hopes of evading the Home-landers. He had hidden me in the Panic Room so I wouldn’t be discovered during the memory attacks. He had left me the symbol so I could escape if he was captured or killed. And now…

  I looked at the pool of blood on the floor. The trail of blood leading into the room. The second pool beneath Waterman’s head.

  He had been shot in the doorway. He had struggled to get into the room. He had managed to position himself before he was shot again-position himself with his hand outstretched, pointing…

  I turned and followed the direction of Waterman’s hand. He was pointing to the slim section of wall beside the doorway. That’s all it was, a slim section of wall between the door and a metal shelf. Blank wall.

  I went to it. I raised my palm. I traced the shape of the house against the blank wall. Instantly, there was the sound of a motor. A panel slid back. A small panel this time. A hidden cache about the size of a paperback book.

  I reached into the cache and at once my hand touched a metal object. My fingers closed over it. I drew it out.

  I knew what it was as soon as I saw it. It was the little gizmo Milton One had been holding when I first came into the compound. The little control panel the size and shape of an iPhone. It was the thing Milton One had used to control Milton Two, that flying security robot that had blasted me when I tried to escape from Waterman and Dodger Jim.

  I looked from the little device back to Waterman’s body where it lay on the floor.

  “Thanks,” I whispered to him.

  The Homelanders had killed him-and now they were trying to kill me, to make sure there was no one left who could stop them.

  Well, they could try. But at least now I had a weapon. Waterman had left me a weapon.

  And I wasn’t going down without a fight.

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  The Battle Begins Four minutes thirty-three seconds… 4:32… 4:31…

  I was glad to get out of that room of death. But the moment I moved back to the main part of the bunker, I saw the bomb again and the seconds ticking away. I stood in front of the device, holding the small controller to Milton Two in my hand. Four minutes twenty-five seconds now… So little time.

  I tore my eyes away from the red numbers and looked down to study the controller.

  At first, the little screen was blank. But I found a button built into the top of the device and pressed it. The gizmo’s monitor light came on. The small screen showed a terrain map with a green dot blinking on it and several blinking red dots as well. There was also a series of numbers up in the right-hand corner. More than anything, it reminded me of a PSP video-game screen.

  Which was a good thing. I was always a pretty decent gamer. Not a game-dork or anything: I didn’t sit around getting fat on Pop-Tarts while fragging Covenant Grunts for fourteen hours at a time or anything. But when a cool new game came out, whether it was an old-fashioned platformer or a full-blown shooter, I was usually the first among my friends to get the hang of it. For some reason, I had a knack for figuring out a level even while escaping a horde of zombies through an underground storage facility. My dad sometimes said kind of bitterly that my generation had developed some new sort of DNA that helped us understand games-but I think he was just jealous because he usually got killed while he was still lifting up his eyeglasses in order to see which button on the controller was which.

  So, forcing myself to stay calm, to ignore the dwindling red numbers on the time bomb, I did a quick study of the controller’s readout.

  I could see right away that the terrain on the screen was the terrain outside: the trees were dark green patches and the buildings were shapes outlined in red. The green dot-that was probably M-2 himself. The red dots were probably bio-heat readings-the Homelanders. There was no way to identify what the numbers were, but I was guessing they were probably M-2’s speed, height, blast energy, and number of tear-gas shots-something like that.

  I glanced up. I couldn’t help myself. The timer was ratcheting rapidly down to 4:00.

  Come on, I told myself, concentrate.

  I looked down at the controller again.

  According to my reading of the map, Milton Two was lying on the ground at the very edge of the ruined compound outside. When I tilted the controller, the green light stopped blinking and the numbers changed: M-2 was rising off the ground and taking flight. I quickly found I could move him by either tilting the device or touching the screen. And more. The moment he started moving, a small square window lit up in one corner of the screen. It was video-the point of view from the camera in M-2’s single eye: it showed what M-2 saw in front of him. There were also two red buttons that lit up on the bottom of the controller. The one on the right was to fire electronic blasts. The one on the left let loose tear gas.

  Again, I couldn’t stop myself from looking up at the clock: 3:56… 3:55… 3:54… I seemed to feel every second dying inside me as it ticked away.

  I glanced over at the monitors on the wall. I could see the Homelanders there. Three of them had stopped moving now. They had taken up positions, standing with their guns propped on their hips. They were guarding the area, waiting for the explosion that would destroy the bunker-and me, if I was still inside.

  Okay, I thought. Okay. I needed a plan of attack. What would give me my best chance at getting out of here?

  My first thought was to send M-2 after the guy near the entrance in the brick cylinder. I remembered the pain of getting hit with M-2’s blaster: it paralyzed me, knocked me right off my feet. If I took out the entrance guard, maybe I could break out and make a run for it. But then I thought: No. Once the blasting started, the others would be alert. They’d come running in the direction of the fight. If I hit the entrance guard, they’d converge on the doorway, closing off my escape.

  So the best idea was to strike away from the entrance first and hope the guard outside the brick cylinder abandoned his post so I could get away.

  I studied the wall monitors quickly. All the Home-landers were at their positions now. They were communicating with one another throug
h microphones clipped to the shoulders of their khaki jackets. The leader-the killer I knew as Waylon-was posted off at the perimeter, about as far from Milton Two as he could be. Waylon, I could see now, was a big man, tall and broad shouldered, with heavy, sagging features and a scruffy black beard. He had deep-set eyes that were always moving, watchful. I doubted M-2 could cross the facility and reach him before he or one of the other Homelanders spotted him and possibly shot him down.

  I looked at another monitor where another man was standing beside a broken column of stone. This guy was young-maybe my age. Tall and skinny with light blond hair and a long, narrow face. His eyes looked angry and mean. I looked down at his feet. The morning mist curled around his hiking boots. But as the mist moved and cleared in patches, I could make out Milton Two-the little device shaped like an Xbox controller-lying in the grass about twenty feet away from him. Then the mist closed again and M-2 disappeared behind it.

  I looked at the ticking clock on the bomb.

  3:00… 2:59… 2:58…

  There was no more time to think this over. I had to attack.

  I tilted the controller. Reading the altitude numbers- looking up at the monitor-looking at M-2’s point-of-view screen, I could keep my little electronic pal low to the ground, hidden in the mist. I tilted the controller forward and M-2 began to fly at that low altitude, brushing through the grass as he approached the knees of the blond Homelander standing guard nearby.

  M-2 moved silently. The blond Homelander didn’t hear him coming. But if I was going to get a good shot, I was going to have to come up higher. I tilted the controller forward. The numbers ratcheted up as M-2 lifted into the air, up around eye level. Now I could see the blond guard’s face in M-2’s POV screen.

  I glanced over at the monitor. The blond guy still didn’t see M-2 coming.