Rory was shaking uncontrollably from shock while he was being bandaged, so the medical specialist gave him an injection of morphine to calm him. Then Doc helped Rory lie down in one of the infirmary cots, covered him with light blankets, and dimmed the lights. Rory mercifully fell asleep after a half hour with the aid of the painkillers.
Rory awoke with a start, drenched in sweat, feeling itchy all over. He had only slept for a few hours and woke up in the middle of the night, although he didn’t know if it was night or day.
Doc had stayed in the infirmary with Rory, keeping watch over him while he slept. The hospital corpsman removed the blankets, gave Rory some water, some liquid nutrition, and some acetaminophen with codeine, and then gently removed the bandages and rewrapped him with new ones.
Rory couldn’t sleep for a while, having dozed for so long already. His mind was on rewind and kept playing back all of the events leading up to his recent downfall: his father giving him the letter and then passing away, deciding to take the cruise, being tossed about in the storm, being trapped inside a submarine submerged four hundred feet below water; and now lying on a tiny infirmary cot, his body covered in bleach burns. Then, worse still, his mind went forward, fearing what might happen next. What will I look like once these bandages come off? Where are they taking me? Will I end up in prison? Oh, God, I don’t know if I can take anymore.
Rory suddenly felt a fresh wave of fear and gloom wash over him. He needed something, anything to help him focus on the present.
“Doc, can I have a book to read, or something to write on? I feel like I’m going to go crazy if I stay in my head right now. I need to take my mind off everything. Please ….”
“Sure. Here.” The kind medical specialist handed Rory a legal notepad and pencil he kept handy for his own lags in time; a man could go crazy if he thought too much in the underwater confines of a submarine, and there were only so many books and movies in the sub’s small library.
Rory decided to try to write a letter to his dad. Since he was left-handed and now would be forced to use his right hand, it wasn’t going to be easy, but Rory welcomed the challenge. He decided to write a poem—he thought it might focus his mind even more to try to rhyme. Thank God he gave me a pencil, Rory thought, writing, erasing, creating. He worked and reworked his poem until he was satisfied. He titled it “Dear Dad”:
The harder I try, Dad, to hide from you,
The deeper I sink into desperation.
The farther I run from what I need to do,
The further I fall into desolation.
I’ve never been one to rely on others,
I thought I was better than the rest.
But I’ve only been running away from life,
And now I’m being put to the test.
Still I know that you are always there,
As I see the error of my ways,
Just like I know God has always been,
All these minutes, hours, and days.
All these years, all of the times I’ve failed,
I don’t think I’ve ever sunk this low,
Or strayed this far, or seen such dark.
I have such a long way to go.
I seem to be filled with shame and dread.
Time moves too slow or too fast.
I have to keep learning many times over,
I can’t change the future or the past.
If I didn’t have faith that you instilled
I know I’d be completely lost.
As hard as it is, I’ll try to stay grateful
And believe this is all worth the cost.
All I can do now is pray you’ll help,
And ask God to hear my plea.
I swear if I get out of here alive
I’ll do all you asked of me.
Exhausted from his effort but content with the results, Rory finally drifted off into a deep slumber.
CHAPTER SEVEN
Rory was napping the next day, his third day aboard the USS Alaska, when he heard the knock on the door. He had been placed in the executive officer’s berth since he needed better sleep to rest and heal, something he couldn’t get in his former quarters according to Doc. The XO’s room still afforded Rory privacy, but since the door could only be locked from the inside, a guard stood watch round the clock. After all, Rory was still an alleged terrorist and prisoner.
His skin had already begun to mend, and he was weaning himself off of the pain medications.
Still, he did not expect to hear the news from the guard, who stood accompanied by a second submariner at his doorway.
“We’re going to be surfacing and heading ashore at the naval base in Corpus Christi, Texas, at nineteen-hundred hours,” the guard said, not revealing any emotion in his voice nor looking Rory in the eye. “You will want to be ready to disembark in thirty minutes.”
And with that, he unceremoniously closed the door behind him.
A dozen questions crowded into Rory’s head: Where will I go from here? What will the FBI do with me? What happens if they question me and don’t believe me? What am I supposed to do if I am eventually freed? How do I follow through on what Dad wanted me to do?
Rory felt woefully clueless. He sat on his bed staring at his bandaged left hand. Then he remembered the small mirror over the sink in the XO’s quarters. He walked over and gazed at his reflection. He looked pallid and tired, with dark circles under his eyes, but the bleach hadn’t damaged his face.
It could have been a lot worse. Still, Rory hung his head, unable to look at himself. How ironic, he thought dismally. I went on a cruise, a trip that was supposed to be a high point in my life, and ended up a prisoner on a submarine, experiencing the lowest point I have ever reached… all in a matter of days … all because I failed to obey my father’s request.
He listened as the crew worked in sync to surface the ship, shouting orders, doing their assigned jobs, pushing buttons, pulling levers, cranking gears.
Soon Rory could feel a smooth pull and shift as the sub surfaced, but this time, it was slow and subtle instead of jolting because they were in the Gulf of Mexico, there wasn’t a hurricane, and the water was peacefully calm.
He was dressed and ready when the next knock came. This time, the XO himself faced Rory along with the same two guards who had come a half hour earlier. Upon the officer’s instruction, they placed Rory in handcuffs and led him down the narrow hall of the submarine to await disembarkation with the rest of the crew.
Rory was escorted to the metal steps leading up the tower and, flanked by guards, led up into the daylight. He was then guided off the submarine onto shore, the paved grounds of the US naval port in Corpus Christi.
Still shackled, Rory knew he probably still had a lot of hardship to face, but he was at least glad to climb out of the bowels of the Alaska and onto dry land.
Several FBI special agents waited on deck to relieve the submarine guards of Rory’s custody. One of the FBI agents, a tall, young, brutish man, marched behind Rory holding a gun at his back.
This is insane, Rory thought, walking as if in a parade, two agents ahead of him, and two agents behind, his bandaged torso and shoulders chafing from his wrists manacled behind him. He felt angry but remembered the promise he had made in his prayer, and decided to keep his mouth shut.
Once inside the port building, the agents seated Rory, still handcuffed, in a chair at a desk in a nondescript office, and stood to await further orders from the man seated behind the desk, apparently an officer in charge, who stood speaking with someone on the phone.
“Yes, we have him. Correct. The vehicles are ready. We should arrive by oh-eight-hundred hours Monday. Yes, tell them to meet us at nine a.m.”
Monday? Rory hadn’t worn a watch or had a cell phone or an alarm clock to keep track of time on the submarine, but he had counted the days and was pretty sure it was Saturday. This whole thing just keeps getting better, he thought ruefully.
The official snapped his cell phone shut. He was a st
ocky, menacing looking black man.
“Uh, excuse me, Sergeant?” Rory made eye contact then glanced away after looking into a pair of the darkest, meanest eyes he had ever seen.
When the big black man didn’t answer but kept glaring at him, Rory swallowed then continued. “Um, can you tell me where I’m going next?”
After a full minute of eery silence, the official spoke. “It’s not Sergeant; it’s FBI Special Agent in Charge,” he replied with an undercurrent of disdain, his voice deep but silky smooth. “And not that it’s any of your business, Mr. Justice, but you are going to Las Vegas, where you will answer to the FBI and the local authorities who have jurisdiction over this matter.”
“We’re not flying?” Rory tried to keep his tone even so as not to make this hulking special agent any angrier than he obviously already was.
“No, we’re not flying.” The note of sarcasm was undeniable. And with that, the agent waved his hand in a dismissive motion to the other agents and stormed out of the room leaving Rory with a dozen unanswered questions in his befuddled mind.
Minutes later, Rory, who was wearing the same outfit he had worn the entire three days on the sub—literally the shirt on his back plus the one pair of pants and shoes that he had worn onboard—was sitting in the back seat of a plain, navy blue Chevy Malibu with tinted windows, with two FBI agents seated in the front. They would be following another midsized sedan of some sort, this one silver in color.
They could dump me out in the desert and no one would know, Rory thought a few hours later, feeling punchy as the cars raced along Interstate 10.
The two drivers pulled over at midnight into a Super 8 Motel. Nothing but the best, Rory thought sarcastically. Sitting by himself in the back seat behind a metal grate that divided him from the driver and other FBI agent in the front of the sedan, he had tried to follow the road signs along the way to keep track of where they were going but had fallen asleep, the remnants of his pain medication taking effect. When he awoke, he overheard them talking. They were in Fort Stockton, Texas, about halfway between San Antonio and El Paso. Texas is so big, we’ll be lucky to get to Vegas in three days, Rory thought dismally. He was hot, tired, hungry, and sore, and above all else, he needed a hot shower.
He had overheard the agents talking at one point, and discovered why he was being driven by car to Las Vegas instead of flying: the FBI wanted to keep Rory’s whereabouts and identity top secret. They also didn’t want to jeopardize the lives of any civilians in a plane or airport if Rory was, in fact, a nuclear terrorist.
This was also the reasoning, he figured, behind travelling in low-key cars and staying in a Super 8 Motel.
Rory was told he would be staying in a double-room suite with the two agents who had accompanied him on the long ride thus far. Their names—although he assumed these were aliases—were Special Agent Smith and Special Agent Jones. They would be in the larger of the two rooms, and he would be in an adjoining room that could only be unlocked from their side. That way he couldn’t sneak out and try to escape.
Like I would even try, Rory thought. He wasn’t crazy or brave enough to run from the FBI; besides, they were in the middle of nowhere surrounded by rugged desert terrain.
Rory didn’t get to see much of Fort Stockton. Agent Jones woke him up out of a deep sleep at 7 a.m., bringing him a cup of coffee and a Danish, telling him he had twenty minutes to eat, shave, and shower before it was time to hit the road.
Standing unclothed on the bathroom’s cold, hard floor, Rory slowly peeled the bandages from his neck and saw that his skin was mottled where the bleach had hit. He had been fully weaned off of the pain medication for his burns and believed it was now time to finally remove his wraps; he unceremoniously started to strip them away, throwing them into the wastebasket along with the last clean set Doc had given him.
After Rory removed the last of the bandanges from his shoulders, he stared long and hard at himself in the mirror, twisting and turning to see as much of his upper body as possible. He suddenly felt a wave of compassion for the legendary pop star Michael Jackson, who had suffered much of his life with the skin depigmentation disease of Vitiligo.
Rory noticed chalky white splotches across the back of his neck, shoulders, and upper arms, and wanted to cry. He vowed to never go to the beach or pool again without wearing at least a T-shirt.
Soon they were driving west again on I-10, the fourth longest interstate highway in the United States, and Rory was living through another seemingly unending day—ten and a half hours to be exact—in the backseat of the Malibu. Except for pit stops at gas stations just outside the cities of El Paso, Texas, Las Cruces, New Mexico, and Tucson, Arizona to hit the restroom and grab drinks and snacks, the ride had been excruciatingly monotonous through hundreds of miles of parched brownish red landscape and little or no scenery.
I hate the west, Rory decided somewhere along the way. I thought the Midwest was plain and ugly, but it’s not half as bad as this desert wasteland. At least there are trees, lakes and shade in Ohio.
Each time they exited the car to go to the bathroom and get something to eat and drink, the heat was oppressive, hitting Rory like a blast from a furnace, like nothing he had ever felt before. At his first encounter with the weather at their first pit stop, the dry, hundred-degree air sucked the breath out of his lungs. He had doubled over, feeling nauseous and light-headed, which had sent the FBI agents into fits of laughter at his expense.
Rory fought a headache along with feelings of humiliation and self-pity for the rest of the trip, but was too proud to ask either of the officers for any pain relievers, so he suffered in silence.
When the hot desert sun went down and the temperature dropped thirty degrees, Rory shivered from the cold, but again, he was too proud to ask to borrow one of their extra jackets or blankets, which he had spotted in the trunk.
They spent the next night at another Super 8 in Wickenburg, Arizona. Rory slept fitfully, tossing and turning that night, knowing Las Vegas was only a four or five hour drive away.
“Sin City” suddenly loomed ahead, but Rory was completely unprepared for this version of the city he had visited before. It was a ghost town. Once tall, glamorous, architecturally astounding casino buildings that together formed a microcosm of the world—buildings that reflected landmarks in Paris, Greece, Italy, Egypt, America—all had been reduced to a shambles of crumbled concrete and marble, and charred, twisted steel.
Flakes of white ash fell from the sky like snow, and there was a notable absence of color. What once before was a full spectrum of every hue was now a landscape of grays and browns.
A stench stung Rory’s nostrils, and he had to cover his nose and mouth with his arm. He could only think of one word to describe the smell: death.
His brain slowly comprehended what his eyes already perceived: Las Vegas had been blown up by a nuclear bomb.
There were about a dozen survivors that Rory could see, a few stumbling along the streets like zombies, heads down, dragging their feet, their skin and hair burned and bloodied from intense radiation. Rory guessed that everyone else had been reduced to bones and ashes and were now part of the rubble of the buildings. He could hear cries, wails, and moans in the distance.
As he walked in a daze behind the two FBI agents, he felt a tug on his pants leg and looked down. A man wearing a hooded sweatshirt, his face nearly unrecognizable and half mangled into a substance like bloody hamburger meat, was sitting slumped on the sidewalk. Two burned, trembling bloody fingers clutched him, all that remained of the man’s hand. Rory instinctively pulled away in disgust and he was paralyzed by fear, not sure what to do next.
Suddenly, the old man reached up his two fingers and removed the hood from his head. He was mostly bald, with only a few strands of gray hair, but Rory instantly recognized him when he looked into his eyes.
“Hello, son.” Howard Justice gave him a crooked grin, exposing a few broken, blackened teeth.
Rory nearly fell backward in hor
ror.
“Dad?”
“Yes, Rory, it’s me—Dad.”
In a panic, Rory searched for his two guards, but they had vanished. He looked down at his father.
“But … y-you’re ….”
“Dead, I know, son. We’ve been through this before. I only look this bad down here to fit in. Don’t worry about that. You need to listen to me. We don’t have much time. All that you see happening here will take place if you don’t do something to stop it.”
Rory listened somberly as his father quickly gave him a glimpse into the future.
“The nuclear bomb I told you about is planted somewhere underground in one of the casinos,” Howard Justice explained, wheezing every few words, his breath ragged. “It’s set to go off on July sixth, when the city will be packed with people who have travelled here to see the biggest boxing match of all time—a fight between heavyweights Jay-Jay Moss, the black Hispanic powerhouse out of New York, and Carmen Gallo, the new “Italian Stallion” out of Chicago.”
His father stretched out his thin, scarred arm, pointing to the nuclear holocaust around him. “This is what will happen if you don’t follow through on what I asked you to do. It’s why you’re here.”
Rory’s gaze followed his dad’s outstretched arm, wondering what he, one man, could do to prevent such a large-scale tragedy.
When he looked down to ask how and why, his dad was gone, and once again, Rory awoke, covered in sweat in his hotel bed. It had been another terrible but very real dream.
After four more nauseating hours of riding in the backseat of the Malibu behind Smith and Jones, Rory could finally see the skyscrapers on the horizon, rising up out of nowhere from the flat, parched desert like the city of Oz.
I guess I’m not in Ohio anymore, he thought miserably.
And with a sense of dread, he realized his life as he knew it back in Columbus was most likely over, and his future lay ahead in this godforsaken city. He was sure he’d be fired from AdExecs for his long absence from work.
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