Three A.M.

by Steven John

  “It wasn’t my crime.”

  “Semantics to be lost on the ages. Besides, one of the last few people who knows that will be dead soon enough.”

  “Then get on with it, you bastard.”

  “Careful what you ask for. See, I don’t need you anymore. At all.” Watley straightened up and trained the pistol on my stomach and held it there for a moment, seeming to weigh his options.

  “So Fallon missed, huh? Shame.”

  “The shame is that he didn’t just drop the gun. I was hoping that bullet would end up in you. Not so long ago, I felt almost like a second father to that young man, you know.”

  He walked away a few feet and began pacing in a loose figure-eight pattern, thinking. Hank had slid down to the floor and sat Indian-style, his face in his battered hands. Watley added: “Not anymore, though.”

  “He’s dead?”

  “Coma. Four shots in the chest. No one’s holding their breath.” He stopped pacing and glanced over at Verlassen, shivering on the floor. “As much as it may shock you, Mr. Vale, I actually don’t like it when people get hurt. I don’t like death.” He looked over his shoulder at me, holding my gaze for just a second. “Anthony Kirk was a friend of mine. Sam Ayers too, once. You’re not.”

  “Well,” I muttered, “with friends like you, huh?”

  “People change. Facts don’t.”

  “Now, you of all people know that’s not true. Not the second part, at least.”

  I rose unsteadily to my feet. He stopped pacing and faced me. Our eyes were locked together for the better part of a minute. Saliva welled up in my mouth, and when I was good and ready, I spit directly at Watley’s face. He stumbled backwards reflexively, clawing at the spit on his nose and cheeks. Then his hand was rising and the pistol was on me and I spun away as he fired.

  The report echoed throughout the mighty hall despite the clatter of machines and the din of rushing water. I felt only a dull pain at first, as if I had stumbled into the edge of a table. Then heat spread through the right side of my lower body. I stumbled backwards, frightened to look down, and crashed roughly against the cement wall, barely keeping my feet. I pressed one hand to my right thigh as the heat turned to searing agony. My fingers came away dripping with crimson. Finally I looked down to see a dark stain spreading over my right leg from just below my waistline.

  I slid sideways to the floor, hands already beginning to tremble slightly. He hadn’t hit my artery. I was sure of that. Bones seemed intact. But I also figured this was it. No way to fight. Nowhere to run. He smiled coldly at me.

  “The next one can be fatal or not. Your choice. I say again, I take no pleasure in violence. Not for its own sake, anyway. I just relish order and control. You tried to damage those things I love.”

  “You…” I coughed and stuttered at the pain. “You could have stopped me a long time ago.…”

  “And I would have, had things not grown so complicated. It’s not my fault you roped your friend into your miserable little life. Not my fault you went back for Rebecca. No matter. Now we’ve moved on to the mopping-up stage.”

  He turned suddenly to face Verlassen. “That reminds me.” Watley walked over to the seated old man. Hank raised frightened eyes set into a gnarled, beaten face. “Shame you got mixed up in Vale’s mess. I sincerely hate to do this.”

  “No!” I shouted as Watley fired three bullets into Verlassen’s chest. The old man’s hands flew to his neck as he fell sideways. He struggled to suck in a breath but could only gurgle and wheeze through his ruined lungs. Blood bubbled from his mouth and flowed from his chest, and his arms slumped to the floor. Hank’s eyes locked on to mine as the life faded from them. One more ragged sigh drifted past his white beard, and he was gone.

  “Fuck you, John. He was an innocent old man.”

  “You brought this all about, Vale. Not us.”

  “Me! Me? You motherfucker! I didn’t kill thousands of people! I didn’t keep those people trapped in the goddamn fog, wondering if everything and everyone out there was dead and gone. Wondering why the fuck we get up every morning! I just tried to have enough to eat and a place to sleep, you miserable piece of shit! I didn’t bring on a fucking thing!” My shoulders heaved with each breath I drew. Rage blocked the pain from my leg. I struggled to rise, almost getting to my feet before Watley took two quick steps toward me and jammed the gun barrel into my ribs. He pressed hard against me, and I slumped back down.

  I coughed, then lamely swatted the weapon away. “What were you going to show me? The video back there in Research.”

  “Ah, yes!” he said with what seemed like genuine pleasure. The patrician crispness returned to his voice as he spoke. “We were going to sit and watch a newsreel. A little something from the archives. The clip I thought you’d most enjoy was from fifteen years go, in fact. I thought it may interest you to see what the whole rest of the world thought had happened here. And how thoroughly they’d forgotten about you all.”

  “And I’m sure they’re putting you on a stamp, you miserable prick.”

  “This will be where the next shot goes.” He dug the tip of his shoe into my stomach. “Then you’ll beg for death. I’m no stranger to pain, Thomas. Cancer. Twice. Lots of people have gotten it. Not surprising at all, of course, but still—it’s a miserable experience. I disconnected my IV to blow air bubbles into it and end myself once, the pain got so bad. I passed out before I could do it. Which I suppose was for the better. That was the first bout. When it came back, I thought I would be ready to handle it—to fight it heroically. But before long, all my thoughts were of death. Release. For you—” He leaned closer to me and I shrank away, lying flat on my back on the hard cement floor. “—it can end remarkably fast. And why not? Maybe you deserve that much, after everything. So just tell me if she came with you, and if she knew your stupid little plan.”

  His eyes blazed as he spoke, standing over me. I flopped onto my side and turned my head away, feeling the cool concrete on one cheek. Hank’s lifeless face lay not six feet from my own. The old man was already pale. The crimson pool of blood around his neck had stopped spreading. All he ever wanted was a new book to read. Institutionalized sociopaths.

  My body ached. I wasn’t sure if I could muster the strength even to sit up and die properly. Watley stood up to his full height and looked down at me. His gaze traveled with mine to Verlassen’s corpse. He snorted and shook his head, pinching the bridge of his nose between two fingers. That was all I got; it was all I needed. With strength born of abject desperation, I sprang to my feet and swung at him. I put all I had left into it. My hand connected squarely with the side of his head. He stumbled backwards, hand clutching his cheek but never even lost his feet. Recovering quickly, Watley planted a solid kick in my gut. I was thrown backwards against the wall and then crumpled to the ground, my right elbow cracking roughly down on the cement. He was on me in a second, fingers tightening around my neck. I tried in vain to push him away, but my injured right arm was near useless, my left pinned beneath his perfectly shined shoe.

  “You’re not long for this world, Vale. You should have stayed back in the other one and not asked questions.”

  “You should have blown those bubbles into your IV.” My fingers slid into my jacket pocket.

  “No. Wrong. They need me. They all need me. Ayers hated it. Kirk tolerated it. I love it. It’s a perfect world, Vale. It’s contained and sustainable. We should all be so lucky.”

  “You created a monster, and now you don’t know how to stop it.” I winced as he pressed the pistol barrel against my temple. My right hand was sliding out of the pocket.

  “We created utopia. We just need a few more memories to fade. And even if you were right, you can’t just stop a monster.… You have to kill it. Maybe that’s the answer.”

  “Truer words I’ve never heard, Watley,” I coughed out as I jammed the syringe of cyanide into his thigh. His eyes went wide as he looked down and saw the needle, its plunger all the way depressed, sticki
ng out of his suit pants. First fear flashed across his face, replaced immediately by rage. Already his eyes were growing glassy. The pistol trembled near my face. He was swearing, muttering. Spittle collected at one corner of his mouth as his legs began to fail him.

  “Just let go,” I coughed out. “Let it go.”

  He bared his teeth at me. I used what little strength I had left to push him aside just as he collapsed, firing a single shot past my head. The blast deafened me, and I was momentarily blind. In a haze, I rolled his dying body off me and struggled to my knees, crawling away from him. Through blurred vision, I saw his legs spasm twice, and then he was still. I sat there gasping for breath, aching and bleeding. My hands had begun to tremble. I managed to light a cigarette and take a few drags.

  * * *

  It took me seven or eight tight turns, reverses, and retries to get the truck maneuvered before the penstock’s access tunnel. I clambered out of the cab and limped over to the heavy steel doors, pulling one open, pausing and then throwing the second wide as well. I peered into the gloom, barely able to make out the bottom of the passageway some fifty feet below. I wasn’t sure if the propane tank would clear the doorframe. Only one way to find out. And probably not a surplus of time. I had lost a lot of blood. My vision swam, the brightly colored machines swirling together, voices seeming to whisper beneath their mechanical droning.

  I got back into Samuel Ayers’s bright red pickup and threw it into reverse. Leaning out of the open door, I could just barely see down the steep tunnel by the truck’s reverse lights. I drew in and then slowly let out a deep breath. My foot came off the brake and pressed home on the gas. The vehicle lurched backwards. The cylinder just cleared the tunnel doors, and a split second later I was driving down through damp darkness. I estimated as best I could what thirty feet felt like while driving backwards and then violently smashed my foot onto the brake pedal. The tires squealed as I watched the massive propane tank fly off the truck bed and crash violently into the back wall. I sat perfectly still for a moment, waiting for either an explosion or a rush of icy water or both. When neither came after a full minute, I figured I’d cleared the first hurdle.

  I drove back up the steep corridor and steered around several of the clanking turbines, finally stopping the truck just before the raised metal door connecting to the main tunnel’s antechamber. I hobbled down from the truck and over to Verlassen’s body.

  “Sorry, Hank,” I muttered, crouching painfully next to him. I hooked my hands under his shoulders, rolling him flat onto his back, and tried to straighten up to drag him toward the truck. Shooting pains racked my right elbow and thigh. My ribs ached under the strain. I let go of him and stumbled backwards, coming to rest against one of the turbines. After getting my breath back, I tried to lift him once more. It was no use. Too many parts of me were too badly damaged for my body to work as a whole. I’d wanted to drive him out of the dam a ways to where someone would find his body. He deserved to be properly buried. I justified leaving him here to myself as best I could—he had spent the better part of his life in and around dams; he may as well be buried in one. It bothered me to entomb Hank next to Watley, but I had little choice.

  Again I slumped against the turbine, sliding down to the concrete while digging in my pocket for a cigarette. It was my next to last. I put it in my mouth but then took it out again as something occurred to me. I crawled over to Watley’s rigid corpse and pried the pistol from his hand. I ratcheted back on the action, expelling a shell onto the floor. Picking it up, I sucked in a sharp breath. I bit down as hard as I could on the bullet with my back teeth, twisting the brass casing in my fingers. After a moment, I felt the metal begin to give and then suddenly the bullet popped free of the shell. I spit it out and rubbed my aching jaw.

  Not much of the black powder had spilled from the casing. It would probably be enough. It had to be. I ripped the filter off my cigarette and tossed it aside, sliding the unfiltered smoke into the brass case. I rose and limped as quickly as I could back toward the penstock. Excitement helped to dull my pain. Excitement that my plan to detonate the gas tank by jamming a gun barrel into it had been replaced. If it didn’t work, I always had martyrdom.

  The cement was damp and slippery beneath my unsteady feet as I made my way down to the propane cylinder. I flicked my lighter now and then to see, keeping each burn brief, as I was nervous that gas might have been leaking. Reaching the bottom of the tunnel, I leaned for a moment against the heavy steel panel the tank was resting by. I could hear water rushing past on the other side of the cold sheet of metal. The walls vibrated and groaned with it—the lifeblood of the city. Now it would spill.

  I took a long look at the tank’s main valve by the flickering flame of my lighter, then worked by feel in the dark. The aperture widened in a spiral pattern as a disk around it twisted so that the gas flow could be regulated. I took hold of the adjustable disk and turned it about 180 degrees. Immediately, I could smell propane wafting out at me. I checked the size of the hole I’d made with my index finger, and then slid the back of the shell casing into it. Gingerly, I twisted the valve closed until it held fast around the brass casing.

  I leaned back against the damp steel wall to relax and to let the escaped gas dissipate until I could smell nothing but the musty air. I pulled the lighter from my pants pocket and wrapped my fingers around it, holding my fist to my lips. It felt as though I should think of my mother and father or something else from before, or Heller or even just Rebecca, but as I tried to let my mind wander, I thought only of lighting the cigarette and getting to the truck. No matter what happened, the die had already been cast, the machine was running … all was in motion, and I was for the moment nothing but a cog in my own design.

  I flicked the lighter. Its pale, dancing light cast strange shadows on the walls. I cupped my left hand around the flame and slowly raised it to the cigarette protruding from the shell. The patterns of my left palm stood out in the shimmering orange flame’s light—grooves cut deeply into dry, weathered flesh. I paused for perhaps two seconds, looking at my hand. In those seconds, I did see many things from my past. Then I held the flame to the cigarette tip. With no breath to draw life into it, the ember took a moment to catch. Then it glowed gently in the dark. I moved the lighter away and paused for a moment to make sure the cigarette was burning. The stale sweet smell of tobacco filled my nostrils, and I nodded to myself and then stumbled up away from the penstock and time bomb and millions of gallons of rushing water.

  I got up to the turbine room and threw shut the heavy steel doors that led down to the propane tank, hoping to maximize the blast. Lurching toward the truck, I took one last wistful and hateful look at Hank and Watley, respectively. Then I was at the truck. I had left the door open, the keys in the ignition. The engine came to life, and then I was flying through the little room, past Huckleberry Finn and Verlassen’s last supper. Down the long, dim corridor, my eyes darting back and forth from the rearview mirror to the tunnel’s end.

  Then I was outside, the setting sun in my eyes. I stopped the truck a few yards from the entryway and rolled down the window to listen. Nothing. I could hear birds calling and gentle breeze and falling water. From within the dam came silence. I sighed in resignation. I climbed from the truck and began limping back inside. I figured I may as well have one more stroll.

  The few working lights in the long corridor shone down above me, pale and mocking. Tile crunched beneath my feet. I walked back through the little service chamber, glancing over at the open book on the table. I grabbed the book and carried it into the turbine room to rest it, still open to page 110, on Hank’s chest.

  It occurred to me there was no reason to save it at this point, so I drew out my last cigarette and lit it. Looking past Verlassen, I noticed my rifle in a corner where Watley had thrown it. It was better than the pistol. I limped to the rifle and hefted it, feeling the old familiar grips for the last time.

  The cigarette was sweet and rich. Blue gray smoke curled u
p from my nostrils into the still air. My leg throbbed and my elbow ached, but it was easy to take. I would have killed for a taste of scotch. But there was nothing to do but get on with it.

  I checked the bolt and the action on the rifle, and everything seemed to be working smoothly. One last deep drag of the cigarette and I threw it aside. I walked slowly, minimizing my limp, to the penstock doors. Pulling them open, I could hear the murmur of water below. I could just see the large white cylinder in the gloom.

  I planted my feet and switched the rifle to fully automatic.

  Secured the stock against my shoulder.

  The metal was cool against my cheek.

  A faint smell of oil.

  My left arm trembled for a second and then was steady.

  I exhaled.

  My right index finger wrapped around the trigger lightly.

  Then I stopped breathing and drew the trigger all the way home.

  Reports sang out and from below came a bright surge of roaring fire and I was drifting away from it and then all was black.

  * * *

  By now, Rebecca would have seen the note I left on the kitchen table. It was shorter than I’d wanted, but words had failed me. Surely tears streamed down from her soft blue eyes, leaving damp trails along her lovely face. Those eyes that had once been gray … reading my final scrawling:

  I’m sorry, Rebecca. I’m gone. I care about you too much to worry about your feelings; I care only that you stay alive. If I cannot do the same, please forgive me. Please know that I love you. Know that you’re the probably only thing I ever loved.

  It was not enough, but perhaps she would understand. I was so far away. All my life, I had been so far away from everything. From everyone. Principally myself. I saw it now. I had known it always, but only now would I have been ready to look someone else in the eyes, and see into rather than seeing past. See into another rather than seeing my own reflection.