The Final Hour h-4

by Andrew Klavan

  If you’ve ever jumped off a really high diving board, you will know what it felt like then. That plunge where you think that any second you should hit the water, but the second passes and you’re still going down and down, and your stomach starts to rise inside you and then…

  Then I was there. I had done it. I was in the compound. I was underneath the barracks window. The guard was unconscious beside me. Waylon was standing at the window above me. Prince’s voice was drifting out to me.

  They are weary of war, but war is what we live for. They are afraid of death, but death is what we love.

  The guard stirred on the ground, waking.

  Then Waylon moved away from the window. And I leapt up. I grabbed hold of the sill. I lifted myself. I looked in.

  It was one of those weird double moments. I was in the past, but I was in the present too. I knew I was lying on the floor in the weird mansion screaming in agony. And I knew I was in the Homelander compound. I knew the guard was about to cry for help. I was about to be caught. But now-right now-there was this one moment-looking in the window…

  Look! I thought desperately. Look!

  I looked.

  There was Sherman. Prince. Waylon. The table. The laptop.

  The laptop.

  Look, Charlie! What’s on the laptop?

  “ I see it! ” I shouted. “ I see it, I see it! ”

  Then, like an enormous, monstrous paw made of fire rising up from the bottom of the earth, breaking through the earth’s surface to grab me, pain-pain like nothing I had ever known before-wrapped itself around me, closed its flaming fingers tight.

  “No!” I shouted.

  I tried to fight it off, but it was no use. It was irresistible. It dragged me off the windowsill. It dragged me down and down, out of the compound, out of time, out of memory, down into an all-consuming agony like nothing else.

  I have to tell them! I thought. Don’t let me die. Please. Not yet. Mike. Rose. I have to tell them what I saw!

  It was the last sensible thought I had. After that, there was nothing-nothing at all-but falling and pain and blackness.

  PART IV

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  All There Is

  I saw a blue sky. The sun like a medallion. I felt myself floating upward into the light. For a weirdly peaceful moment, I actually thought I was dead and headed elsewhere.

  Then the world contracted in a spasm of pain. I flinched, my eyes shut, my teeth gritted. No, I wasn’t dead. This hurt too much to be anything but life!

  The gripping pain slowly passed. I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on a four-poster bed in a room of high windows. The bed curtains had been pulled aside. So had the window curtains. The skyscape through the pane filled my vision. Then I turned away, looked around me.

  I was in that bedroom again, the room where I’d talked to Beth. Heavy curtains, colorful rugs, knickknacks glittering everywhere, clocks ticking. Clocks… the light… It must be morning now. .. no, later. The sun was low but midway through its transit, as in a winter noon. I stared at a small domed clock sitting on one of the many end tables. After twelve…

  I sat up fast. Too fast. For a moment, I was almost overcome by dizziness and nausea. I fought it off and pushed the bedcovers aside. I stumbled to my feet.

  “It’s all right,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

  Startled, I turned. There was Dr. Farber, sitting in a chair in the corner. A giant portrait hung above her of some rich guy in a three-piece suit. Beneath the picture, she looked small and fragile. Her sharp, crowlike face was gray, her eyes sunken. She was exhausted.

  “You made it,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, but where…?” I began, but another wave of dizziness went over me, and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

  “They’re all downstairs,” Dr. Farber said quietly. “They’re getting ready.”

  “Ready?”

  “You slept the night and most of the morning, Charlie,” she said. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure you were going to come back at all.”

  I tried to take it in. “All night… the morning… It must be…”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve.”

  “New Year’s…”

  Urgency cleared my mind, washed my nausea and dizziness away in an instant. I was on my feet in a moment. I suddenly realized I was undressed, wearing nothing but underwear.

  Reading my mind, Dr. Farber pointed to a gilded chair against the wall. There were clothes folded on it. “Those are clean.”

  Jeans. A T-shirt. A sweatshirt. A baseball jacket. I pulled them on quickly.

  Then I looked at Dr. Farber. She continued to gaze at me, weary but glad-glad to see me alive, I think.

  “Do you remember what happened last night?” she asked me.

  I thought about it. I did remember. The injection. The renewed memories.

  I see it!

  “Did I do it?” I asked her. “Did I remember anything useful?”

  She nodded wearily. “You did it, Charlie. You remembered-and you told us about it.”

  I shook my head. The night before was a blur.

  “Rose and Mike,” said Dr. Farber. “They have it all. They know what they need to know.”

  “Where…?” I began.

  “They’re in the kitchen,” Dr. Farber said.

  Like everything else in the mansion, the kitchen was huge. There was a high ceiling with all kinds of brass and iron pots and utensils hanging from it. There was an enormous black stove and a big butcher-block table with an elaborate mosaic surface.

  A TV was embedded among the tiles on one wall. It was playing the news. There were pictures of New York City. Enormous billboards. Video screens the size of houses. Lights flashing even in the daytime. I recognized the streets around Times Square.

  “People are already beginning to gather for the big celebration tonight…,” the newswoman said over the pictures.

  Rose and Mike weren’t here, but Dodger Jim and Milton One sat at the table. They were eating rolls and eggs. Both had their eyes on the television when I walked in. Milton One was the first to turn to me. He lifted a roll.

  “Good,” he said, his voice friendly and calm as always. “You’re in time for breakfast.”

  “Where’s Mike?” I asked him.

  “Have some eggs too,” said Dodger Jim, scraping some onto a plate for me.

  “Where’s Rose?” I asked.

  “Eat, Charlie,” said Dodger Jim. “You’re going to need it, believe me.”

  “Organizers estimate there could be over three million people tonight in Times Square alone,” said the newswoman on the television.

  I stared at the set, the pictures of smiling, laughing people bundled up for winter on the streets of New York. Snatches of conversation from the night before flashed in my sleep-fogged brain.

  The whole point about Cylon Orange is its density. Six canisters is enough to wipe out four city blocks.

  Four city blocks in New York City on New Year’s Eve…

  Could be a million people there. A million, at least.

  I turned to Milton One, now calmly holding out a plate with eggs and bread on it.

  A million people, at least.

  “Where are they?” I said again. “Rose and Mike. Where are they?”

  “Mike is in the gym, studying maps,” said Milton One. “Same as he’s been doing most of the night. Rose is upstairs in the big room, calling everyone he knows, trying to convince them the threat is real. Same as he’s been doing all night.”

  “Patel’s outside getting the plane ready,” Dodger Jim added.

  “The plane…?”

  “Eat, Charlie. I mean it,” said Milton One. “It’s going to be a long day. You won’t make it without food.”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said desperately. I pointed at the television. “They’re already gathering in Times Square. We have to do something.”

  “We will,” said Milton One in that same
calm voice. “And the first thing we’re going to do is eat.”

  I was frustrated, but I saw the sense of it. I grabbed the plate. Grabbed some silverware off the butcher block. Quickly, I shoveled eggs into my mouth, swallowing them without tasting them.

  “Tell me what happened last night,” I said through a mouthful of food. “What did I see? What did I do?”

  “You screamed like a banshee for one thing,” said Dodger Jim. He smirked as he said it. I had given him a couple of knocks awhile back during a fight we had. He didn’t seem too sorry that I had been in pain.

  Milton One rolled his eyes. “The important thing you did is you remembered.”

  The images began to clear. It came back to me. I stopped eating. “The laptop. The laptop in the barracks.”

  “Prince was apparently showing his friends the route he would take to get to Times Square. You saw a map,” said Milton One. “A map of the New York City subway system with a route through the tunnels illuminated on it.”

  “The subways…,” I murmured.

  “You were able to trace the route on a map Mike showed you.”

  “Yes…,” I said. It came back to me. “That’s right.”

  “Security is extra tight,” said the newswoman on television, “but if people are afraid they’re not showing it. They’re coming to the Big Apple in droves…”

  On the screen, groups of people cheered and waved, celebrating the New Year.

  “Well, then, if we know where Prince is going…,” I began to say.

  But now Rose walked in. I-and Jim and Milton- turned to look at him.

  He was wearing slacks and a wrinkled button-down shirt. He was carrying a battered leather briefcase in one hand. I would say he looked grim, but he always looked grim, his mouth tight, his intelligent eyes alert. He looked at our expectant expressions. We didn’t even have to ask the question out loud.

  “I’ve got some assurances from the NYPD that there’ll be a powerful police presence along the route we think Prince will take,” he told us with a sigh.

  Slowly, I laid my empty plate down on the butcher-block table. “A powerful police presence…?” I asked. “What does that even mean?”

  “Probably?” said Rose. “It probably means it’ll be harder for us to get where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  Before Rose could answer, I heard the Cessna engine start up outside. It roared and throbbed.

  The next moment, Mike walked into the kitchen.

  He nodded once at Rose. “I’ve got the layout down solid,” he said. “I know every inch of the way.”

  Rose nodded back. “Good.”

  The detective set the leather briefcase on the table. He opened it. Reached in. He brought out a deadly-looking pistol, a 9mm Glock. It was already stuck in a shoulder holster. He handed the gun and holster to Mike. Mike was wearing a dark tracksuit. He pulled the jacket off and slipped the holster on over his sweatshirt. As he did, Rose brought another pistol out of the briefcase. This one he handed to me.

  “Waterman gave you some weapons training, didn’t he?” he asked.

  “Some. The Homelanders gave me some too.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to blow your own head off.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I took off the baseball jacket and strapped the weapon on over my sweatshirt. It felt heavy and somehow dark beneath my arm.

  Now Patel appeared in the doorway. We could still hear the plane’s engine rumbling and pulsing outside.

  “We’re ready to go,” said Patel.

  I looked at them, all of them. Mike, Rose, Patel. Dodger Jim. Milton One. I looked from one face to another.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked them.

  For a moment, none of them answered. Then, finally, Mike said, “We’re going to stop them, Charlie.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Just us?”

  Mike took a long breath. Then he nodded. “We’re all there is,” he said.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dead in the Air

  The Cessna flew low over green rolling hills. Then, after a while, Patel found the highway and we followed its winding white path. As the winter sun sank and the pale blue of the sky grew deeper, small cities appeared sparkling below us and then melded into thick forests or faded away into empty fields.

  Soon more highways seemed to join the one we were following, becoming a snaky tangle of pavement amid the surrounding foliage. More cities seemed to rise beneath us. In the intervals between them we saw broad highways flanked with gas stations and malls. The dusk gathered slowly and the world turned gray.

  I was sitting up front in the passenger seat again, Rose behind me, Patel next to me, Mike behind him. I peered through the side window at the changing light outside and the changing scene below.

  “There’s the river,” Patel said to me finally. His voice crackled over the headset and under the thrum of the engine. There were bursts of static and distant voices on the radio, but the volume was very low.

  I followed the gesture of his hand, looked ahead through the windshield and saw where the graying landscape reached what at first seemed like a sudden ending. Then the darker gray of the river became visible, a long, thick line. Another little while and I could make out the water, the low December sun behind us sending a fanning, sparkling line across it to the far side.

  “And look there,” said Patel, pointing to my side.

  I turned and looked. Far off against the deep blue distance, I could make out the Manhattan skyline, a jagged dance of stone. The lights were just beginning to come on in some of the windows.

  “Nice, huh,” said Patel kind of wistfully.

  “Awesome,” I said. It was. An awesome, amazing city.

  “I grew up there,” he went on. “In Brooklyn, over on the other side.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I miss it now, I’ll tell you.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Home, right?”

  “Exactly. Home.”

  “I miss mine too,” I said-and I felt it. As far away as I’d been, as much trouble as I’d seen, I’d never felt as far from being reunited with my family and friends as I felt just then. Just then, to be honest, it seemed impossible it would ever happen.

  “A city like New York,” said Patel. I glanced over at him. He kept one hand resting lightly on the plane’s yoke and the other lying limp on his leg-the way pilots do to keep from oversteering. He gave me a smile, trying to sound relaxed and cool. But I could tell he was feeling the pressure too. We all were. “A city like New York gets into your blood somehow.”

  “Does it?” I said doubtfully.

  “You don’t like it?”

  “New York?” I shrugged. “I like it okay.”

  “You’re more of a small-town guy, huh?”

  “Yeah, I guess. To me, New York is kind of noisy and crowded and-I don’t know-like, overwhelming.”

  I heard Patel laugh a little over the headset. It was sort of a sad sound. He was thinking about home. “I’ve heard people say that,” he said. “I never noticed.”

  “In New York, everyone’s always walking around really fast with these serious looks on their faces. What’s that about?”

  He laughed again, fondly now. “Everyone thinks he’s very important and has something very important to do. That’s what makes it New York.”

  I nodded, smiling, but I wasn’t thinking about New York. I was thinking about Spring Hill, my hometown. I remembered those quick flashing scenes I’d seen last night in the falling panic of my memory attack. Scenes of my life back home, of being a kid. My mom driving me to the mall for my karate lessons. The baseball field in Oak Street Park where I played with Alex when we were still good friends. The path by the river where I walked with Beth when we were just getting to know each other… No one rushing around very much or looking very serious or feeling very important. A different kind of place.

  “I guess
it’s all about what you’re used to,” I said.

  “I guess so,” said Patel.

  We had reached the river now. Patel banked the plane to the right and started flying over the water, following its flow. The lowering sun sent its pale light pouring in through my window. I could feel the warmth of it on the side of my face. I looked ahead, watching the city skyline growing larger and larger, more and more lights coming on in the windows. Below us, too, and to the left, city streets sprang up on the riverbank, stores and apartment towers, their lights also coming on. To the right, great surging brown cliffs sprang up darkly beside the water. As we flew toward the city, another small plane came toward us, flying just above us and to the left. It passed overhead, not far away at all.

  “Almost there,” Patel said after a while. And then-as if he’d been thinking about it all this time-he said, “To me, no matter where I go, New York is always home. When I’m away from sidewalks and tall buildings, I feel like I’m nowhere.”

  I smiled, but it was hard for me to imagine feeling that way about such a big city. I had been on the run so long, been trying so hard to get back to my old life, that it felt to me no one could want to be anywhere besides Spring Hill.

  “For the last three years, I’ve had to live in Virginia for my job,” Patel went on. “It just about drives me crazy. As soon as I can, I’m planning to bring my wife…”

  My wife…

  Those were the last words Patel ever spoke in this world. The next instant, the plane’s side window shattered. The windshield went scarlet with Patel’s blood and he was dead.

  I could only sit there staring as he fell toward me, held in place by his shoulder-strap seat belt, his right hand still convulsively gripping the yoke.

  I heard Rose roar out something in my ear. Dazed and horrified, I had only one second to look up and see the chopper that had pulled up alongside us in the darkening sky. A gunman sat balanced in its open door, his automatic rifle trained at our cockpit.

  Milton One’s words came back to me:

  Prince will know you escaped. You’re the one person who might know enough to catch up to him, so even though he hasn’t got a lot of manpower left, he’s sure to be looking out for you, waiting for a chance to send someone after you.