The Homeland guard finally pushed past Meeks, eyeing us threateningly. It was Maddox. He had nothing to confront us about though, the girls had moved on without any more fuss, the sound of Allie’s sobbing now receding into the distance.
I stared the bigger man down, almost daring him to make a move. Perhaps he saw something he didn’t like, or perhaps he didn’t think it worth the effort but eventually he shuffled past me without saying a word. I moved on as the last few stragglers, one of them Paul’s sister, went past. She looked even more pregnant than the last time I’d spotted her a few days ago, and even more unhappy.
Meeks waited for me and stepped in beside me as we continued on our patrol. I waited for the inevitable questions. He surprised me a little by not jumping straight in.
“Are you okay?”
“Yeah,” I said, surprised and embarrassed when tears sprung to my eyes.
Looking back, I guess I hadn’t really finished my own grieving for Sonny and the raw grief from Allie seemed to trigger something in me. Suddenly I was angry, angry at the situation, angry at the Professor and his cronies, angry at myself for displaying weakness when, right then, in just a few hours, I needed strength. I shook Meeks’ comforting hand from my shoulder and turned to the wall.
“Fuck…I… am…so… over… this…shit…”
I punched the concrete wall, punctuating each word with a muffled, fleshy exclamation mark. Meeks pulled me away before I could do too much damage, but my unhappy rage left blood splatters on the pristine white wall. I struggled, and Meeks surprised me yet again, this time by pulling me into a bear hug. To this day I’m not sure if it was to restrain me or comfort me or both, but I am grateful.
“Calm down Isaac,” he said firmly.
My outburst seemed to have done the trick. The pain in my hand cut through the red fog of anger and grief and I let the soldier hold me a moment longer.
“I’m okay,” I whispered as I pushed away.
“Show me your hand.”
I held out my hand, palm down. Three of my knuckles were bloody but I could tell I hadn’t broken anything. Calmer now, I cursed my stupidity. The last thing I needed would be to be incapacitated in any way during the escape. As it was I was lucky, the bruising would be painful, but it shouldn’t impede me if I found myself in a hand to hand combat situation.
Meeks assessed my injury by watching my face as he moved my fingers separately of each other. He seemed satisfied when I did not wince or complain.
“Well, no major damage but it will be sore for a few days. I’ll get you a few days’ worth of Tylenol when we finish our shift. So, what’s the story, or don’t you want to talk about it?”
Meeks had been so reasonable, and so different to the Meeks I thought I knew, that I told him everything. I explained why Allie had been so upset and also what we had found out about Sonny. It felt so good to get it off my chest, to be telling someone outside our group, that I also told him of our plans for the escape. I knew the information was safe, Meeks hated the Professor and the Homeland guards as much as we did.
He listened in relative silence, asking a few questions here and there. I told him it would take place early the next morning. As I spoke, I began to realize that I was giving away a lot and became much more circumspect. In the end Meeks only knew that it was kicking off at 3am the next morning, but nothing about the weapons or the mechanics of the actual escape plan.
“I’ve said too much, haven’t I? Please Meeks, even if you don’t agree with what we’re doing, don’t say anything. We need to have total surprise on our side.”
“It’s okay Isaac, I won’t say a thing. I won’t say it’s a mistake either, I know you thought this through. There is no way I would want to go though, I want to be here when the Colonel finally gets jack of Leahy and all his bullshit. There’s a bullet in my gun with Williams’ name on it.”
“Fair enough.”
“You sure then? Down here your people have food, water, shelter and security. It’s a real risk you’ll be taking. A few of them could die.”
I thought for a few seconds before I answered. “Yeah, I’m sure. Not about dying being better, but we have to try. The Professor killed one of us for an experiment, nothing more. That tells me that he’s bad. Two of the girls in the north wing are pregnant, and who knows how many more there will be … haven’t you ever wondered why the females are kept separate to us? This whole thing is like the Garden of Eden for him and he thinks he’s God, but he’s really the snake.”
“I agree, he is a sick, evil son-of-a-bitch... you know that you’ll have to kill to get them out right? And you’ll be neck deep in shit for helping them after they’ve gone.”
Once again Meeks gave me pause to think. I didn’t care about what would happen to me but of course I’d thought about the possibility of having to kill again… but not too hard. My mind had skirted around the issue, imagining that we could take the Homeland guards by surprise and maybe tie or lock them up. But deep inside I knew it wouldn’t work out so bloodlessly.
“Yeah, I know. We’ll try to do it without spilling blood, but I know it’s a longshot.”
“Okay. Well good luck, I hope they make it.”
16
We finished our shift a few hours later and went back the lower level. I spent an hour or so showering and then chatting to a few of the guys. I made the final preparations for early the next morning, putting my boots under my bed and fresh uniform under the covers. I also had a small backpack that I’d stocked with a canteen of water and some packets of beef jerky. Dawes had insisted on giving me the supplies when I told him I’d been getting pretty hungry on patrol the day before, hoping he’d give me a few packs of beef jerky.
“Here you may as well take a canteen too, we have enough to see out the end of the world…oh wait, that’s what we’re doing! Here you may as well take a backpack to put it all in, too.”
The backpack went in beside the boots and I headed up to the Midlevel to meet up with Ben, Luke and the others. Our last chance to talk before zero hour.
I didn’t stop to eat an entire meal, I was too nervous and just grabbed a bread roll with a slice of cheese and went straight into the rec Room. It was more crowded than usual with off-duty soldiers but there were no Homeland personnel around. While we had seen more and more of them since the confrontation a week before, they still mainly kept to the upper level when they weren’t on duty.
We were unable to secure the sofa in the alcove as we usually did, so most of our talking was done as we waited around watching the action on the pool table. Luke looked happy, a stark contrast to my own feeling of apprehension.
“Aren’t you nervous?” I asked.
“Sure. But I’m just happy that it’s finally happening. I don’t know how much more of this place I can take. I don’t think I was designed to be cooped up for too long.”
“Same. We have to do this, right?”
“Yes,” he said emphatically. “Don’t second guess yourself, Isaac. We’ve gone through all the reasons and you know it’s the right thing to do. We have to take our chances and decide our own fate, otherwise it was all for nothing and we could have just handed ourselves over to the Chinese when they invaded.”
Once again, my friend’s eloquence strengthened my resolve.
“Okay. You’re right. I may have said a little too much to my patrol partner, Meeks.”
Luke looked at me as Ben handed me the pool cue.
“One sec,” I said, and turned to take my shot.
Luke wasn’t happy.
“What did you say to him?”
“I didn’t give him any details, but I basically told him the outline of our whole plan.”
“Dude, what were you thinking? We need the element of surprise if we are going to pull this thing off, you know?”
“I know, I’m sorry, I was having a tough time with something and…and…well it doesn’t matter now, he knows. But he was okay with it, even though he doesn’t think it’s a g
ood idea. We can trust him.”
He didn’t say anything for a few moments, and I felt the heaviness of disappointment in his silence. I took another shot as he weighed up what I had told him. He seemed to be over it by the time I returned.
“Okay, I understand you trust him, but we can’t take any chances. I want to bring our plans forward by half an hour. I don’t think we should tell anyone else though. Not even the other guys.”
“I’m down with that, but how will it work if we don’t say anything?”
“Well you and I are the linchpins of the operation. We just move earlier, wake the other boys and start the ball rolling.”
I thought about this. It made sense and wouldn’t change things dramatically, other than giving us a head start in case of any interference as a result of my indiscretion.
“Okay. That should work.”
“Wait, what about the girls?”
“It won’t change anything, other than the fact we may need to go in and get them rather than have them waiting for us. Knowing Indigo, she will probably have them ready to roll earlier anyway.”
“Okay.”
We knuckle bumped and returned to the game. I managed to talk quietly with Ben and Paul. They too were ready, although Paul seemed a little withdrawn as though something was on his mind. I put it down to nerves and concern for his sister. We had fun for the next few hours playing pool and horsing around, the nervous energy made us all a little crazy I think. As I watched them playing and laughing, I couldn’t help wondering if it was the last time we would enjoy each other’s company in such a place of safety… or at all.
We said our goodnights quite early. Luke slipped his iPhone to me as we went out. I went to bed fully clothed in the uniform I had stashed. As I slipped under the cover, the phone was beside my pillow, set to vibrate and the alarm programmed for 215 instead of 245. My Taser and pistol were under my pillow and I planned to steal at least one more of each when I awoke, more if I could. Everything was ready.
Part Three: Crashing Down
17
I was at home eating breakfast. We were all there at our kitchen table. Dad was in his suit and tie, sipping coffee, occasionally sweeping his fringe out of his eyes as he read the morning paper. Mom looked beautiful, her dark hair back in a ponytail as she held her toast in one hand and tapped out a message on her phone with the other. She was in her workout gear, ready to head to the gym after she dropped me and Rebecca to school. Rebecca was noisily eating her Froot Loops, her hair tangled and waiting unsuspectedly for Mom’s brush of pain.
I felt comforted in the familiar routine of it. The warm comfort that only a kid can feel in the arms of his family. The warm comfort of innocence. But behind that there was something else. Something that I couldn’t quite put my finger on it. Maybe it was why they wouldn’t look at me? No matter how much I tried to catch their eye, I couldn’t. Had I done something to upset them? That wasn’t all though. There was something else. I couldn’t speak. I didn’t try, because somehow, I knew that if I did, no words would come out anyway. It was almost as if I wasn’t there… wait, that was it!
I wasn’t there!
It didn’t make me sad. I was more curious than anything and contented myself with watching them as they went about their morning routine. It was strangely wonderful, and I felt I could be quite content to sit there forever.
Bmmm Bmmm Bmmm…
Mom’s phone began to vibrate on the table. Bmmm Bmmm Bmmm. Why wasn’t she answering it? I felt myself getting upset, she should really answer it. I struggled to speak and found that I could after all.
“Answer it Mom…”
My eyes snapped open. My heart was racing. I had spoken the words aloud and woken myself up. I snatched up the iPhone, swiping the alarm off and held my breath, waiting for a sign that I’d woken anyone. Nothing. No one said anything, and all I could hear was Bowman’s soft snoring from the bunk above me.
I exhaled slowly and waited a few minutes, just to be sure, before sitting carefully and slipping my feet to the floor. I paused again when the bed squeaked and then put my boots on as carefully as I could. Standing, I put on my pistol belt and clipped on the Taser.
I quickly moved to the foot of the bunk where Bowman’s pistol belt was draped. I didn’t breathe as I unclipped the holster cover and slid the weapon out. I couldn’t find his Taser and wasn’t willing to risk waking anyone to find one.
I pulled my small backpack from under the bed and slipped the weapon inside before pulling it onto my back.
As I closed the door to the barracks behind me, my heart was already beating hard. Adrenalin was pumping through my system and all I had done, was basically get out of bed and walk through a door. I deliberately paused for a few seconds and made myself calm down with a breathing technique I had learned in Kung Fu training. I didn’t want to pay the price later by allowing all my nervous energy to be taxed before we even got into real danger.
When I felt I had my nerves under enough control, I took off as quickly as possible and headed to the storeroom. While I had access to enter the storeroom, there would be little of any use that I could take without weighing myself down unnecessarily. More weapons were out of the question, they were locked in a cage and Sergeant Dawes was the only one with a key.
The night time lighting of the facility was a strange dim yellow, and the empty corridors on the way to the storeroom reminded me of those in a video game I had played a few times with my friend Tommy. F.E.A.R. had a little girl’s ghost that appeared in the corridors during very suspenseful moments of the game. It had freaked us both out. Not to the point where we stopped playing, but it certainly had added another dimension to the gameplay.
But I wasn’t freaked out now, just determined. I swiped myself into the storeroom and walked purposefully to the cargo lift at the rear. I stopped briefly to sweep a shelf full of beef jerky into my backpack and then, just as I was about to reach the elevator, I saw a large plastic baggie of zip ties on a bottom shelf. Mother lode! I slipped the bag into the backpack and pressed the call button for the elevator. While I waited, I unclipped my Taser and held it loosely in my hand. The worst scenario would be for the lift doors to open and reveal someone in there.
It was empty, and I stepped in and pressed the button for Midlevel. Now I just had to hope that the doors didn’t happen to open at the exact time the patrol was passing. I wouldn’t let bad luck get in the way, though. I tensed, raising the Taser as the elevator car slowed and came to a halt. The doors opened quietly onto an empty corridor. Good.
I peered both ways before stepping out. This would be the hard part, negotiating my way to the dormitory while avoiding the patrol. I followed the corridor that ran parallel to the one that had the main entrance of the cafeteria and rec room. I paused at the corner. This turn would take me through the quiet area and then onto the main passage to my destination. I listened but couldn’t detect any conversation or the sound of footsteps. It seemed luck had come down on my side this time.
I padded over the carpet and again paused before heading into the main corridor. Another two turns and I was safely into the east wing. I arrived at the boys’ door and pulled out the iPhone. It was 2:21. I swiped my card and found them in various stages of undress.
“Hey,” I said, not really knowing what else to say. Everyone responded with a ‘hey’ except Paul.
“Luke woke us and told us you’d be early. What’s going on?”
He looked puzzled and nervous. I put it down to the fact that he had just woken up and was about to embark on an escape attempt that could turn deadly. Which was totally understandable.
“Um yeah, we had to change plans for security reasons.”
Paul hovered around as Luke stepped up, fully dressed of course, and gave me a knuckle bump.
“Chief…you pumped?”
He had a sharpened knife strapped to his thigh and a handful that he had been handing out to the other boys as they finished dressing. Behind him I could see his m
akeshift assegai standing against his cot. I had to hand it to him, it looked plenty deadly.
“Yeah…pumped,” probably not as convinced as I sounded.
The small but sharpened knives suddenly didn’t look convincing, especially when I thought about the firepower that could be brought against us if things went pear shaped.
“Here.”
I shook off my backpack and pulled out the Beretta that I had stolen.
“You rock, Chief!”
I watched as he expertly ejected the clip, making sure it was full before slamming it back into place and aiming at the door, one hand bracing the other and getting a feel for it. He squeezed off a couple of imaginary rounds and slid it into the waist band of his pants.
“I’m all set. Just going to finish giving out the knives.”
Paul approached, looking serious.
“I don’t think we should go yet, what if the girls aren’t ready?”
“Too late now,” I said. “If the girls aren’t waiting for us, we will go into the rooms and find them.”
He bit his lip and I thought he looked a little desperate.
“Is everything okay?” I asked.
“Yeah…yes of course. Just a little jumpy, I guess. I still think we should wait though, you wouldn’t want anyone else in the north wing raising the alarm.”
“Dude,” said Luke, coming over and handing Paul one of the sharpened knives. “It’ll be okay, they’ll be ready even if we are early. Indigo is organized like that.”
Fight Like Hell [America Falls Series | Books 1-6] Page 44