The last thing I remember h-1

by Andrew Klavan

  “I just want to say…” she began, but then the crying overcame her and my dad had to talk instead.

  “We just want to ask the police-please, be careful. Don’t hurt our boy. He’s only eighteen. Please…”

  And then, as I sat staring up at the TV, my dad had to stop talking, too, just like my mom. I’d never seen my dad cry before, not ever. I have to admit, it made tears come into my eyes as well.

  I put my fork down on my plate with a shaking hand. I lowered my face until I could get myself under control.

  But the shocks weren’t over.

  Now the TV reporter said, “West’s girlfriend also had a message for the fugitive.”

  I looked up quickly. My girlfriend? I had a girlfriend?

  There on the TV screen-to my utter amazement- was Beth Summers. I couldn’t believe it. But it said so, right there in a caption under her face: “Beth Summers, killer’s girlfriend.”

  My mouth fell open. I must’ve looked like an idiot, sitting there, staring at the screen with a big open mouth. But that was nothing compared to what I felt like inside. I mean, just to see her-Beth-just to see her face again, made me feel a strange ache inside me as if a hand had wrapped itself around my heart and made a fist. The curling honey brown hair framing her smooth face, her blue eyes, and just that sweetness in her expression that I could never describe… How long had it been since I’d seen her? A day? A year I couldn’t remember? Or what felt like a hundred years since I looked at the phone number she’d written on my hand and turned off the light in my bedroom and went to sleep?

  Beth was sitting in a living room-hers, I guess, though I couldn’t remember ever having seen it. There was a reporter-maybe Alexander-sitting across from her. Now and then they would show his face and he would nod sympathetically as Beth spoke.

  Beth’s eyes were filled with tears, but her voice was steady.

  “Is there anything you’d like to tell Charlie right now?” Alexander said, in that syrupy voice reporters use when they want to sound like they care.

  Beth nodded and took a deep breath. Then she looked straight at the camera-straight at me. “I’d like to tell him: Charlie, please, turn yourself in. I just don’t want you to get hurt or”-she had to swallow down her tears before she could go on-“or killed, you know? If you come back, we’ll keep fighting in the courts. I promise. We’ll make everyone see that you’re innocent, that you’d never murder anybody. And also, I just want you to know: I still believe in you. I still love you.”

  The breath rushed out of me as if I’d been punched in the stomach. She loved me? Beth was my girlfriend and she loved me? How had that happened? When had it happened? How could I not remember? Had I held her hand? Had I kissed her? Had we taken walks together and told each other what we thought about and what we wanted to do with our lives? Was all that gone, gone out of my memory forever?

  When they cut away from Beth to another picture, I wanted to reach out and grab the television and make it stop. I wanted to call to Beth’s image on the screen and beg it to stay there just a little longer so I could look at her. I wanted to say: “Don’t go. Don’t leave me here in this homeless shelter, hunted and alone. Say that you love me again.” But she was gone, and the story ended, and the newswoman behind the desk came back to talk about other things.

  I felt so bad, so heartsick, I just rested my elbows on the table and put my hands over my face for a long time.

  But after a while, I felt something. You ever do that trick, where you stare at the back of a guy’s head until he can feel it and it makes him turn around? Well, I felt that. I felt someone looking at me.

  I lifted my eyes. I scanned the room. There he was: a man, watching me. He was one of the homeless guys, a white man in an old army jacket. He was bald and had a silver stubble of beard and a narrow face with sharp features. He was sitting at a table nearby, mopping up the last of his food with a piece of bread. But all the while he was swabbing the bread around on the plate, he wasn’t looking down at it. He was staring at me.

  He recognized me. I could tell. He must’ve been watching the TV the same as me. He must’ve seen my picture. Then I guess he saw me and he knew who I was. At first, I tried to convince myself it didn’t matter. I tried to tell myself that he wouldn’t go to the police, wouldn’t try to collect any reward that might be on offer. I was so tired, see. Tired of running, tired of being afraid. I didn’t want to leave the church shelter. I didn’t want to leave the warmth or the light or the kindness of the people behind the counter with their smiling faces. I didn’t want to leave the television set. I wanted to sit there and wait until another news program came on in case they showed Beth again and my parents. I didn’t want to go out into those cold streets where Detective Rose and the other police were searching for me. So I tried to tell myself that it was all right, that I could stay.

  But it was no good. The old man kept watching me. I could almost hear his brain working behind his dull, grayish eyes. I knew that as soon as he could, he’d tell one of the shelter people about me or even find a phone and call the police.

  You know who I thought about then? I thought about Alex. Alex Hauser. I thought back to that night we sat together in my mom’s car and talked, that night they say I followed him into the park and killed him. He was so sad that night, so sad and angry. He had lost his faith and he had lost his way. I remembered the things I had told him then. Things I had learned from my dad and from church and from Sensei Mike. I told him he had to keep on trying, to trust in the good things and never give in. I told him he had to keep on believing that God was there and that God knew where he was and would help him keep his spirit strong. Alex got angry at me because he said I didn’t understand how hard it was. And you know what? He was right. I didn’t understand. Not then.

  But I understood now. It can be crazy hard. To keep your faith, to keep going. It can be harder than I ever would have imagined. Sometimes things happen to you, really bad things that aren’t fair, things that make you feel so terrible you’re not even sure who you are anymore or whether you’re right or wrong, good or bad. Sometimes you feel like there’s no one to turn to, and you’re all alone and so scared you can hardly move and so tired you just want to curl up in a ball and go to sleep forever. I guess that’s kind of the way Alex felt that last night I saw him. And that’s the way I felt now.

  But I guess I had one advantage over Alex. I guess in some way I’d been training for this time my whole life. I’d been training every day, even in simple things, little things. I trained to keep my mind sharp when I went to school. I trained in karate to keep my body and spirit strong. Even when I just went to church, or when I prayed by myself, it was a kind of training: I was training to remember that I was not alone. I was never alone.

  Well, training was over now. This was the real deal. I didn’t want to get up. I didn’t want to leave the warmth of the shelter. I didn’t want to start running again in the night and in the cold.

  But I had to. I had to.

  I grabbed a roll off my plate and stuffed it in my pocket so I’d have something to eat later on. Then I got to my feet.

  It was time to go.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  A Cry in the Night I walked and walked. I wanted to get lost in the city in the dark. I knew I needed to get out of here, as far away as possible, before the police hunted me down. But without any money, without any help, I couldn’t figure out what I could do or where I could go. I thought about finding a phone, calling one of my friends-Josh or Miler or Rick. It would be so good to hear their voices. Maybe I could even call Beth. Maybe she would say those things to me that she said on TV.

  I still believe in you. I still love you.

  But no. I was a fugitive, a convicted killer. If they helped me, they would get in trouble with the law themselves, they would become accessories to my crimes. I couldn’t do that to them. I had to figure this out on my own. I had to figure out another way to escape from here and clear my name and find Waterma
n and warn Secretary Yarrow about the Homelanders.

  I had walked a long time, lost in my thoughts, when I finally stopped and looked around me. I had come into an open area, a street lined with huge, brick warehouses on one side and railroad tracks on the other. It was dark where I was, but there were streetlights not too far off. Under their glow, I could see some boxcars parked a little way down the tracks. I had this crazy thought about how I could sneak inside one of the cars and then, when the train started moving, I could ride it out of the city.

  Luckily, before I could do anything that stupid, something distracted me: a short, sharp, high-pitched noise. A cry in the night.

  I turned toward the sound, my muscles tensing. My first instinct was to run away. The last thing I needed was to get mixed up in any kind of trouble, anything that might attract the attention of the police.

  But as I looked, I saw something I couldn’t run away from. Down the street, a figure moved out of the darkness into a circle of lamplight. I could tell it was a woman even though she was hunched over and kind of shapeless in an old black overcoat. She hurried through the glow, her hand out in front of her as if she was groping for something to hold on to. Then she was gone, swallowed in the shadows beyond the lamplight’s reach.

  I guessed she had been the one to cry out. I could see she was scared. I could see she was running away from something. But I couldn’t see what the trouble was.

  Then I could.

  The next moment, another figure came into view. It was a man this time, large, lumbering. He came running into the light after the woman. His steps were crooked and unsteady. He shouted in a slurred voice, “Come back here!” He shouted again-a foul word-and then his voice dropped into a mutter of curses.

  I hoped he would turn around, go away. But he didn’t. As I stood there watching him, he hurried after the woman, stumbling headlong out of the lamplight, into the dark.

  I couldn’t see either of them. Maybe she had gotten away. But now I heard her cry out again, and his rough voice answered her in a triumphant, guttural growl. He had her.

  I hesitated another second. A fight was sure to bring the police. But what was I going to do? Just stand there and let this woman get attacked? There was no way. Not while I had a chance to stop it.

  She cried out again. I started running toward her.

  A moment later, I was close enough to see them, even in the deep shadows. They were pressed tight against the brick wall of a warehouse. The man had the woman pinned there, one hand on her throat, the other moving roughly over her body. He was big and thick and powerful and he loomed over her. I could see the whites of his eyes and his bared teeth. I could see her eyes too. I could see the terror in them.

  I kept running. I was just going to tackle him and take him down, hold him there until she got away.

  But he heard my footsteps. He turned and saw me before I reached him. He kept his one hand on the woman’s throat, but his other went in and out of his pocket. A blade flashed dully as it caught what little light there was. He had a knife.

  I pulled up short. He held the woman against the wall. He waved the knife in the air and glared at me through the darkness.

  “What?” he said roughly, drunkenly. “What do you want? Huh?”

  I was out of breath, my heart thumping, but I tried to keep my voice quiet. “Let her go,” I said.

  He looked me up and down. Then he gave a hard laugh. “You want to die tonight, punk? Get outta here.”

  The woman made an angry noise. She grabbed at the hand on her throat and tried to pull away. He shoved her back against the wall, throttling her so hard she gagged.

  “Hey!” I said. I took a step toward him.

  Suddenly, he threw the woman aside-just hurled her away from him so that she stumbled a step, grazed the wall, and toppled to the sidewalk. She lay there, gasping for breath, clutching her throat.

  At the same time, the drunk leapt to meet me, slashing at me with the knife. The blade made a vicious diagonal in the air, a stroke meant to cut me open. I was quick enough to dodge back, my arms flying clear, my body bending so that the blade whistled past, missing me by an inch or two.

  We faced each other there in the darkness. He waved the knife around threateningly. He grinned. His eyes were bright and gleaming. He was enjoying himself.

  He jabbed at me with the knife again. Jabbed and slashed, making me dance backward. He laughed at that. He crooked his hand at me, beckoning.

  “What’s the matter, punk?” he said. “You afraid? Come and get it. Come on, come on and I’ll show you what I…”

  In the middle of his sentence, I brought my right foot swinging up from the ground in an arc. It’s called a crescent kick. Even though you’re standing in front of a guy, it comes looping around at him from the side. The drunk didn’t see it until it hit him. Then the edge of my foot struck him in the wrist. The impact knocked the knife right out of his hand. The knife hit the brick wall and fell to the sidewalk with a metallic clatter.

  The drunk went for the knife, but I was there first. I let the force of my kick carry me forward and brought my foot stomping down on the weapon where it had fallen. At the same time, I grabbed the front of the drunk’s shirt with my right hand and drew my left hand back, ready to strike at his eyes or throat.

  All the gleam was gone out of those eyes now, and his snarling laughter was gone too. His mouth was open in surprise and his hands were up in fear, and I could feel him shaking, waiting helplessly for me to strike. Yeah, he was a big man when he was roughing up a woman, when he was pulling a knife on an unarmed man. But he was just a bully-a drunk and a bully and a coward.

  I shoved him away from me.

  “Get out of here,” I told him.

  For another second, he stood there, staring at me with that same frightened look on his face. Then he frowned-a sulky, little-boy frown as if he were being sent to bed without his supper.

  “What about my knife?” he said.

  I laughed. You have to laugh. People are nuts sometimes. “Go on,” I said. “Don’t make me hurt you.”

  Frowning, sulking, he began to edge away from me. Weakly, he muttered, “Punk. Why couldn’t you just mind your own business?”

  I didn’t even bother to answer. I stood where I was, my foot on the knife. He kept edging away, edging away. He edged into the light again-the circle of light from the streetlamp.

  Then, with a last scowl, he turned and slunk off, out of the light into the darkness, and he was gone.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  Crazy Jane I turned around, looking for the woman. She was gone as well. I figured she’d run off while I was dealing with the drunk. So here I was alone on the street again and still with no idea where to go, or what to do next.

  I bent down and picked up the knife the drunk had dropped. I looked at it. It was a crummy old thing, a switchblade, good for nothing but stabbing people. I drew back my arm and hurled it into the night. I heard it give a distant chuck as it hit the gravel on the train tracks.

  I started walking again along the line of warehouses. I got about ten steps before a hand shot out of the darkness and grabbed my arm.

  I turned. It was the woman, the woman who’d been attacked. She was hiding in a recessed doorway. As she took hold of me, she stepped out, peering up at me intently.

  I looked down at her. She was small. Her torn gray overcoat dwarfed her. She had a large, round face with a strangely innocent, even childlike expression. Her cheeks and forehead were covered in grime and red sores. Her brown hair was so filthy it was matted into dreadlocks. She was so dirty I couldn’t tell how old she was-not very old, I thought, maybe thirty or something. She had large, almond-shaped green eyes that moved over me quickly and nervously.

  Her voice was a low murmur. “I know you,” she said. She said it dreamily, in this kind of distant, eerie tone.

  I felt my arm go tense in her hand. “Oh yeah?”

  She nodded, a quick, squirrel-like motion. Then, glancing thi
s way and that, she said, “Come with me.”

  She took me to the corner and down a street, then to another corner and down another street. The whole time she was talking to herself-or maybe she was talking to me, I couldn’t be sure. She was talking very fast in that dreamy, low murmur, saying stuff like, “Jane knows… they sent the knife-man to keep her quiet… about the impulses… they’re electric, you understand… mind control… but they can’t get Jane…” She kept hold of my arm, moving along beside me with small, swift steps. She kept her eyes moving, too, scanning this way and that. Once, suddenly, she drew me into the alcove of a warehouse bay and we hid there. “They’re coming. They’re coming. Jane knows… ” she murmured. I figured she was crazy. There was nothing to hide from. I didn’t hear or see anything to be afraid of, anyway. But the woman said again: “They’re coming. Jane knows.” And it turned out she was right: a few moments later, some hulking thugs went by, a small gang of them. We waited in the alcove till they were gone.

  We walked on, Jane holding my elbow, murmuring the whole way. Finally, we came to an old brick apartment building, its walls practically black with graffiti. Some of the windows were broken, but there were lights on in some of the others. I caught glimpses of shadows moving inside, so I knew the place wasn’t deserted.

  “They haven’t found this… my hideaway… my secret place… they don’t know about it… the impulses can’t come here…”

  She pushed the front door open. There was no lock. Murmuring crazily, holding on to my arm, she drew me up the stairway. The second floor was destroyed, abandoned, the same as the building I’d hidden in before. But on the third floor there were walls and doors. Some of the doors were shut, and light came out from underneath them. I heard some low music coming from behind one of the others.

  We climbed the stairs to the fifth floor. Then she drew me down the hallway to her door. It was locked with a padlock. The woman-Jane-finally let go of my arm in order to fish the key out of her huge overcoat.