911: The Complete Series

by Grace Hamilton

  Jake continued, “I couldn’t move after they shot me, and there was a lot of blood, so they thought I was dead. They started raping Amy, like a pack of animals. The whole time—” The tears started running down his face. He didn’t even seem to notice them. “She was trying to crawl to me, to help me. They just kept laughing.” He stopped talking and shuddered, but continued before Sara could figure out how to respond. “After a little bit, I could move again, but nothing was working right. I tried to get to her, but they saw me moving and kicked the fuck out of me until I was unconscious. I woke up when Margret found me. Amy was dead. They’d hit her with a hammer until,” his voice was strangled as he tried to continue, and he choked before adding, “until I couldn’t recognize her face anymore.”

  Sara swallowed, and reached out her hand to lay it on his shoulder, the food she’d eaten suddenly feeling like a boulder in her stomach. “That’s awful,” she said after another moment had passed, when Jake seemed to be getting a hold of himself again. “It’s so awful, just saying it’s awful seems like an insult. I’m so sorry, Jake, I don’t have words.”

  Spooner nodded. He took a hard breath and cleared his throat, using the sleeve of his shirt to wipe the moisture from his face. “It’s okay,” he said. “I’m okay. I just wanted to tell you that, to have you know, so the next part of what I say makes sense.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “I mean, when those spooks from the UN told us what was really happening, and Margret started running this cell, and I learned who was really behind what happened to Amy… I wasn’t on board. I was too broken up that people in my own government had done this to me. Had done this to Amy. I let Margret use the place and do what she needed, but I wasn’t much help. Not really.” He smiled at Sara, his eyes still wet. “But the stories about how you and your dad fought back, how you were able to go toe-to-toe with those Council bastards and bloody them good… all that started getting passed around. When I heard that, I felt like I was my own self again. Like a real fight might be possible, and coming. You could say it shook me out of my grief.”

  He took one of Sara’s hands in both of his, and she looked down at his hands. They were big, strong hands. The hands of a worker. They reminded her of her father’s. She thought about how he’d suffered through those years when she’d been with the Church of Humanity and how he’d fought to find her. She missed him, her worry like a dull ache behind her breastbone. She put her hand over Spooner’s.

  “Jake, I—”

  “You were a hero, Sara. You inspired people, whether you know it or not—that’s what I want to make sure you know. Your father is a hero. He’s inspired people. No one else has been able to fight back the way you did, not to that level, not yet. You were the first, and that makes you heroes, understand?”

  He stood, smiled, and picked up the plate and empty beer can. “I’m done,” he laughed. “I just wanted you to know.”

  Sara nodded, but couldn’t bring herself to speak.

  After Spooner had gone, she sat quietly for a while, lost in her own thoughts, practically trapped by them. She’d never seen herself as a hero; she’d seen her dad’s efforts as heroic in their magnitude of struggle, but not in a clichéd sort of knight in shining armor way. She hadn’t thought of him as a hero, definitely—not in those words. The reality of the brutal acts they’d had to execute had tarnished any concept of heroics for her.

  Yes, they’d been brave, and yes, they’d been strong, but “hero” was such a clean word… and much of what they’d done had been far from clean. And really, their motivations had been selfish. Her dad had been a sworn law enforcement officer as well her dad. Yet, he’d never taken up the struggle against the Council for any reason other than his own. Even his saving Ava, she knew, could be attributed to his inability to process the pain of having failed to protect his own daughter.

  And Finn had been a magnificent person. Maybe the best of all of them. But, in the end, she’d done what she had out of love for Ava, not love of freedom. And Ava? Ava fought for her own freedom and out of hate. Sara had been little different. For a while, she’d even been a willing pawn of her oppressors. Nothing was clear-cut and noble here. Nothing was heroic.

  I’m not a hero.

  The heroes were the people in the resistance. People courageous enough to fight not just for themselves, but for others, for an ideal much larger than themselves. And saving their countrymen from whatever horrors were going on in the prison in Terre Haute would make everyone see that. She just had to make sure they took up the fight. They couldn’t be scared off before it had even started.

  Resolute, she stood. Ava was right. She needed to tell Margret and the rest of the cell the truth about what was happening at the prison so that they could all go forward and engage in this fight.

  After asking around the house, Sara found Margret and the rest of the cell about half a mile down the road. There was an old rural substation for the county fire district there. She nodded her way past two sentries and slipped inside.

  Behind a full-sized ladder truck, she found them standing around a map of the area south of Terre Haute. Ava stood on the far side of the room, her arms folded. She didn’t make eye contact when Sara entered. Margret did, however. The cell leader didn’t look happy.

  “Okay,” she told everyone. “That’s the plan. Finish the modifications to the firetruck and we’ll be set.”

  The group standing around her began dispersing. Hoping she wasn’t too late, Sara pushed forward. She walked up to Margret just as Ava wandered over.

  “Margret, there’s something I have to tell you, based on the Terre Haute recon,” she began.

  Margret held up her hand. “Save it, Sara. There’s nothing you can tell me that Ava hasn’t already.”

  Surprised, Sara looked at Ava, who shrugged.

  Ava met her eyes as she spoke, her words coming solid in the air between them. “You were playing with people’s lives, Sara. They deserved to know the truth.”

  Sara swallowed her discomfort, nodding. “I realize that now… I couldn’t agree more.” She turned to face Margret. “Obviously, we can’t go ahead with our plan if they’re expecting us.”

  Margret shook her head. “We’re going ahead with the plan, as is.”

  “But—” Sara protested.

  Margret cut her off. “There’s been an update in the situation.”

  Sara looked at her. “What update?”

  “The prison is under the control of Warden Spencer. He’s inside now. Killing him wouldn’t do much to change FEMA capabilities, but it would definitely deliver a blow to the Council. We’re going to hit that prison with everything we’ve got.”

  Sara froze, stunned.

  Margret smiled and reached out to place her hands on her shoulders. “But we’re on the same side, so no more lies, okay? Even if you think your reasons are justified.”

  Sara forced a smile for the other woman. “Deal.”

  At that moment, one of Margret’s lieutenants, a Chinese American named Brian Chan, hurried up to them. Instead of having his rifle slung over his shoulder, he carried the AKM in both hands, and Sara saw the fire selector switch was off safety.

  “We’ve got to move!” he half-shouted, breathless. “There are armored vehicles rolling our way—the government’s coming.”

  5

  Parker didn’t know how long he’d been in the cell. Time had become one sharply linear moment of cold reality and harsh white light. Time simply passed, and he waited it out.

  He was naked now. Lying on a rough concrete floor that held patches of damp seeping up from below. The walls were bare cinderblock. The single door was a blind-riveted heavy iron plate. Once it had been painted firetruck red. Now the paint was bubbling and peeling from the surface, exposing scabs of rust.

  There was no bed, not even a mattress on the floor. Only a bucket with a white plastic lid was there for Parker’s use, and it stank like a desert latrine. It was emptied periodically; the observatio
n plate in the rusting door would clang back, and eyes would look in to gauge the depth of Parker’s waste in the bucket. If it was deemed necessary, a voice would bark orders for Parker to stand against the far wall, hands clasped behind his back, his forehead against the chill cinderblock. The heavy door would open and the bucket would be removed, a clean one left in its place. Afterwards, the door would boom shut and Parker would be left alone.

  The room temperature never went above uncomfortably chill.

  For prolonged periods of time, speakers set in the high ceiling, which Parker couldn’t reach even if he tried jumping, blared Billy Ray Cyrus’s “Achy Breaky Heart” on a continual loop, hundreds and hundreds of times. Keeping him awake, robbing him of the respite of unconsciousness. Just when Parker thought he could cope with the high volume and psychopathic repetition, the song would cut out. There would be a minute of blessed silence, and then Shania Twain’s “Man! I Feel Like a Woman!” would begin the next insanely loud rotation.

  Over and over and over again. Maybe he’d gotten some enjoyment out of the songs once, long ago, but he never would again.

  Parker was well aware of this particular flavor of psychological torture. Iraqi prisoners had been subjected to it in Abu Ghraib prison in 2003. To the eternal shame of the military, prisoners had been isolated and subjected to heinous humiliation. Pictures taken of them being forced to masturbate, climb all over each other naked, go through mock executions, and generally get humiliated had not only brought the U.S. Army into disrepute with the international community, but painted a bigger target on any U.S. forces soldier who’d then gone patrolling, even in areas that had been considered relatively safe.

  Parker’s knowledge of the tactics employed to unsettle him didn’t help him cope with the constant playlist from Hell’s iPod. Far from it. The noise had put him in a low-level state of anxiety when he’d considered what might come next—when they got bored with playing ultra-loud, awful faux country music for him.

  However, despite the panic he’d felt upon the breaking of his earlier routine, Parker did take some comfort from two facets of the situation. First, the anxiety he felt about the future mindfucks and abuses his captors might visit upon him had not even a hundredth of the force of the panic attack he’d suffered on the way to the cell. Second, although his captors were still feeding his addiction, Calhoun was no longer coming into the cell to inject him; instead, every third or fourth tray of food that was placed in the center of the room by a guard—once Parker had “assumed the position” against the wall—was accompanied by a small plastic medicine pot, each one filled with 40 ml of methadone.

  Methadone was a commonly used opioid substitute for heroin addicts. Green, sticky, and foul, and taken orally, it gave none of the rush of a good hit, but it still mercifully denied the onset of a full cluck of cold turkey.

  Parker measured time now in how he was feeling between doses. When Parker felt he was teetering on the edge of a comedown, he would sit in the center of the cell trying to mind-force the door open with sheer willpower. It took his mind off the sweats and the ugly flower of panic unfurling in his gut. These sweaty-mouthed moments waiting for his next swallow of methadone provided him with a clock of sorts. Marking the passage of hours between hits. This was what he had become now, a junkie clock.

  Parker couldn’t help thinking that his captors enjoyed making him wait an extra hour or so from time to time, to pay him back for them having to listen to Billy Ray Cyrus on endless repeat, if nothing else.

  The waitress put Parker’s coffee on the tray, smiled at Sara, and waddled away from the counter to pick up their pancakes, moving in rhythm to Shania Twain’s vocals coming over the loudspeaker. Sara had been very specific about her order, delighting Parker with her serious precociousness. “I want to order my own pancakes, Daddy,” she had declared as they’d made their way into Elkhart’s W. Jackson Blvd. Dairy Queen. Listening to her, watching her, Parker’s heart had swelled with love and pride at the little woman his little girl was becoming.

  There had been no line to wait in; they’d been able to walk right up to the order point, through streams of golden spring sunshine. Its warmth radiating through the windows, feeling more than pleasant on Parker’s skin.

  “And what can I get you today, young lady?” the enormous, apple-shaped waitress had asked.

  Sara’s hands tangled and twisted behind her as she concentrated, causing her words to run together like cars colliding on a foggy day. “I would like two pancakes, please, with the syrup already on so that it soaks in by the time we sit down plus two small squirts of ice cream, but I don’t want them to touch the pancakes, please.” Sara had run out of breath by the time she’d gotten to the end of the sentence, and the last five words had come out as a croak.

  The waitress’s eyes flicked to Parker, and they exchanged smiles. “Well, if that’s what you want, young lady, that is exactly what you will get.”

  Parker ruffled Sara’s hair and she gave him her best “Don’t mess up my hair, Daddy” look. Parker’s grin was so wide that its ends threatened to meet around the back of his head and let loose his jaw.

  Parker looked around the Dairy Queen. It was 8 a.m. on a Monday morning and they were still the only customers.

  He checked his watch. Looked through the window at the parking lot, and beyond to the row of stores on the other side of the street. Apart from Parker’s SUV, there were no other cars at all.

  The SUV stood in a golden patch of sunlight, utterly alone.

  Something at the back of his mind itched. He couldn’t…

  “Daddy!” Sara tugged at Parker’s hand. Parker blinked and looked at his seven-year-old daughter. Sara had obviously been trying to get his attention for some seconds while he had been staring into the parking lot. She was pointing toward the counter. Parker blinked and focused on the waitress.

  “That’ll be $5.99,” she said in the tone of voice used by someone who’d already said the same thing twice already.

  Parker handed the waitress a ten, picked up the tray they were offered, and waited for change. The waitress grinned at Sara as she handed it over.

  Sara led Parker to a booth near the window. “Daddy, you must always listen to what people are saying. Miss Munro says that not listening is rude. You were rude to that lady. You should apologize.”

  Parker wasn’t used to being scolded by his daughter. “Hey, who’s the parent here?” he mock-complained as Sara popped open her pancake box and picked up her white plastic fork.

  Next, Sara’s scream threatened to shatter the glass of every window in the place.

  A greasy, wet, black rat, its eyes shining with rodenty malevolence, sat in the middle of Sara’s pancake box. Its quick feet trailed smears of ice cream through a brown slick of now rancid syrup. Before Parker sprang out of the booth, dragging Sara’s thin arm with him, he noticed dots and dashes of rat shit running across the surface of the pancakes like the devil’s own Morse code.

  “Jesus!”

  Sara turned away from the table and buried her head in his side.

  There was a sudden stab of pain in Parker’s thigh.

  The rat continued sitting on the pancakes, cream in his whiskers, the beast’s tiny front paws scrabbling at the surface of Sara’s breakfast.

  Another searing pain. This time in the top of his right arm. It had come out of nowhere. He watched with horror as blood welled from beneath the material of the white cotton, police-issue shirt. The blood was coming so thick and fast that it began to sweat through the material and run toward the crook of the arm cradling Sara’s head.

  Only, Sara wasn’t there anymore.

  Parker spun on his heel, wildly searching the restaurant with his good eye. Where had she gone? What the fuck was happening? How come I only have one eye?

  “Sara!” he shouted, something harsh and prickly catching in his gullet.

  He coughed. Parker’s mouth felt like it had been soaked in vomit. The gouging pain of prolonged retching caught
in his throat.

  And the restaurant suddenly stank of vomit and the peppery odor of CS gas.

  “Let the bastard bleed out,” someone said. “I don’t give a fuck if Spencer wants him. Let him die.”

  There was only the rat. Parker couldn’t see the waitress anymore. Through the window, the street and parking lot were just as deserted as before.

  Focus! Parker thought. First principles. Stay alive. Find Sara. Pressure. Apply pressure.

  Parker clamped his hand over the welling patch of blood soaking his arm and moved away from the rat. The creature had become distracted from the pancakes, and was looking at the blood seeping through Parker’s fingers as he pushed down on the impossible wound that had appeared beneath his shirt, backing away from the table.

  Parker, not giving the rat a chance to think about springing off the tabletop toward his fresh blood, pulled the police issue Glock 22 .40 caliber from his hip holster, flicked the safety, squeezed the trigger and disintegrated the rat’s head. The headless body smashed against the window and slid down, leaving smears of syrup, ice cream, and blood.

  “We should have just slit the bastard’s throat.”

  “Fuck it. We still might.”

  Nowhere voices, saying nowhere things. Parker’s thinking stalled, his throat tight as things went black.