by Ben Follows
The earpiece bounced up and down on Jake’s chest, and he noticed it only when he heard Harold’s voice shouting from it. He put it in his ear as he ran, weaving between trees and putting distance between him and the FBI agents.
“Jake,” Harold said, frantically. “Where are you going? The GPS is going insane.”
“FBI’s on me, I’m going to lose them.”
“Where are you going? I can map out a path.”
Jake stopped talking as puzzle pieces fell into place in his head. How they had found Sarah. How they had found him. “I’m getting to a safe place to retire myself,” he said.
“All right,” said Harold, sounding disappointed. “You did well, Jake. I’m sorry there was nothing more that could be done.”
“As am I,” said Jake, stopping just a few dozen yards before where the forest ended and the sun shone through beyond the Crescent Point. “I’m going to jump in the river, buy you some time while they have to search for my body.”
“Thank you, Jake. You would have made a great agent.”
He ripped off the earpiece and grabbed the radio at his waist, which contained the GPS tracking device, holding it in his hand. He could hear the shouts of the FBI agents gaining on him. He broke into a sprint as bark flew off the trees behind him. He broke free of the forest and ran the last few dozen yards to the river. He didn’t slow and took a running leap into the river. He hit the water and sank a dozen feet down, his legs straight. He didn’t open his eyes at first. He let go of the GPS tracking device and the earpiece.
He forced his eyes open in the murky water and watched as the GPS floated toward the bottom of the river, knowing Harold would be watching. Once he was certain the GPS wasn’t going to float up to the surface, he turned and swam east, staying below the surface so as not to be seen.
Only when he could no longer hold his breath and his lungs were aching did he surface for air, and then only just enough to get a breath and a brief glimpse of the area where he had jumped in.
He had come farther than he thought. The FBI agents were standing at the edge of the river, looking down at where he had jumped. They hadn’t spread out to find where he had swam, and they didn’t seem to be looking toward him.
Jake thought he could see the silhouette of Chief Williams standing at the edge of the water and wondered what he was doing there for just a second before plunging back under and continuing to swim as far as he could underwater before coming up again. He repeated this six times before he felt comfortable enough to pull himself up onto the shore, his lungs, arms, and the rest of his body driven by nothing but anger and adrenaline. He lay there for a few moments, breathing heavily, his chest heaving.
This was no time to rest, and as soon as he was physically able he pushed himself to a standing position. He was drenched. As he shook his head, pieces of garbage flew off him, but he didn’t care. He was alive, and he'd escaped.
He walked to the nearby road and stood on the shoulder with his thumb out. Less than ten minutes later, a red clunker of a Mazda driven by a round-faced middle-aged man pulled up beside him. He rolled down the window.
“What can I do for you, buddy?” he asked. “You look like you’ve had a rough day.”
Jake pulled out his gun and pointed it at the man. The gun was waterlogged. Hopefully, the man wouldn’t know that. “Get out of the car.”
“Whoa, man. I’m just a regular guy. I don’t want any trouble.”
“Get out of the car and there won’t be.”
The man opened the door and got out of the car, taking a few steps back with his hands raised. Jake circled the car, keeping the useless gun pointed at the man as he backed away. Jake climbed into the front seat and made sure the keys were there before lowering the gun and hitting the gas.
“Hey,” the man shouted at him. “What am I supposed to do?”
Jake didn’t respond as he sped away. He curved through the back roads as fast as the car could carry him.
He rejoined the main road and sped past a few fire trucks and police cars coming in from neighboring districts to help with the factory explosion and the fire that dominated Jake’s rear-view mirror. He sped past them without so much as a second glance.
Chapter 35
Jake drove past Zeke’s video store with the intention of refreshing his weapons, only to find the store surrounded by police cars and Zeke being dragged out the front door while a SWAT team swarmed into the yellow building. If they had found the bunker, it was only a matter of time until a few failed combinations would result in the self-destruct sequence, if it hadn’t already been triggered by Harold or someone at headquarters. It also further confirmed Jake's suspicions.
The main drag of Crescent Point was a mess, with tourists frantically trying to get out of a town that seemed to have become a war zone. Fire trucks, police cars, and FBI vehicles came from the other direction. Jake cursed and took the side streets until he made it up to Harold’s country house.
He hoped his suspicions were wrong, but the moment he pulled into the driveway and saw the baby blue Honda sitting there, he knew he was right. He stepped out of the stolen car, his useless gun holstered at his waist. He pushed his hair out of his face and looked up at the dark sky.
He circled the house, keeping close to the walls and out of the view of the windows. He was trying to catch voices or shadows that would tell him where they were. When he was passing the sitting room at the front of the house, he heard a woman’s laugh, followed by Harold’s. He had found them. He was certain Harold would have seen him if he was keeping track of his surveillance equipment, but he wasn’t. This was a time for celebration.
He returned to the front door and kicked it in without knocking, raising the gun. “Everybody freeze or I’ll blow your fucking heads off!” he screamed as he entered. The door smashed into the wall, making a dent in the drywall, and spun into the living room.
Harold and Janet, still wearing her uniform from the seventies diner, froze in the living room, their china teacups still toasting in midair. Janet’s eyes had opened wide in horror. After a moment of obedience, she jumped back and her cup went flying through the air, the dark liquid within splashing along the ground just before the cup hit the same spot and shattered.
“Jake?” said Harold, calmly placing his cup on the table. “What are you doing here? You are breaking protocol.”
“I could ask you the same question,” said Jake. “Why is she here? Why aren’t you retired?”
“She’s a friend, Jake. She has no idea what you’re talking about. You’re letting this get out of hand, and frankly,” he went to stand, “this isn’t very becoming of a potential agent of The Compound. This is akin to failure.”
“Sit back down!”
“Jake, we’re friends here. That gun looks waterlogged too. It’s no danger.”
Just before Harold was within arm’s reach, Jake lunged forward and hit Harold’s head with the butt of the gun. Harold fell to the ground and landed in a heap. Once he would have been quick enough to react, but age had caught up with him in at least that one way.
Janet yelped and sank farther back into her chair.
“Now,” said Jake, turning to Janet. “How much do you know?”
“I don’t know what you’re talking about,” screamed Janet, staring at Harold’s unconscious body on the ground. “I have no idea!”
“Don’t lie to me, or I will kill him.” Jake pointed the gun at Harold. “And then I will kill you.”
“Everything! He told me everything! Please just leave me alone.”
Jake stepped toward her. “Everything what?”
“Everything about The Compound, everything about what you do, about you, about how you had killed yourself in the river. Please, don’t hurt him. I love him.”
"Tell me everything."
Janet spilled her guts.
When she had finished, Jake smiled. “Give me your cell phone.”
Janet did.
“Now, go get some rope
and pull some chairs into the bedroom. I’m going to tie you both up, and then you’re going to tell me everything he told you. If you do anything or try to get in contact with anyone, I will kill him. Do you understand?”
Janet nodded frantically. She was whimpering, tears coating her face as she struggled not to break down, her eyes going to Harold’s slumped form every few seconds.
“Good. Go.”
Jake had her set up two chairs, one in the bedroom and one in the living room. He hefted Harold into the chair in the bedroom, his chin falling to his chest. He had Janet stand back while he tied him. She only made one move to step toward him, but the instantaneous jerk of his head toward her and his glare took away her courage.
He guided her into the living room and tied her up as well. Once he was finished, he got a dishcloth from the kitchen and held it out to her. “I don’t want to gag you, but I will if you make any noise, is that understood?”
She nodded.
“I’m going to leave this here, where you can see it. If I hear even the slightest peep from you, I will gag you. It’s very unpleasant. It was done to me in training. Understand?”
She nodded, trying to keep calm and stop her whimpers. Jake watched her for a few moments before walking into the bedroom. Harold was still unconscious, his head slumped to one side. Jake closed the bedroom door and walked into the closet. He opened the secret door to the staircase and walked down to the bunker, entering his own code into the door—all codes worked on all bunkers in case the owner was incapacitated—and walked inside.
He replaced his weapons with functioning ones and packed any potentially helpful weapons into a bag, repeating the same procedure he’d done the previous night with Sarah. When he finished, he placed the bag outside the bunker, looked straight up into the camera so that The Compound would know he was alive, and entered the self-destruct sequence on the computers for both this bunker and the one beneath Zeke’s store.
He listened to the gears click as the door closed for the last time.
He grabbed the bag of supplies and walked back up the stairs. He could hear the mumbled shoutings of Harold amidst the self-destructing bunker.
“Janet? Janet?” he was saying, barely able to raise his voice. Janet didn’t reply.
“Ah, Harold,” said Jake at the top of the steps. “Glad to see you’re awake. I was worried you’d sleep through my whole speech.”
“Jake?” said Harold, still woozy. “What’s going on? Where is Janet? What are you doing? The director wouldn’t be pleased with this.”
“I think you know as well as I do that the director has no idea what’s going on here. He’s probably sending people to investigate right now and try to salvage this. They won’t get here for a few hours, but in the meantime we have a lot to talk about.”
“Jake, I have no idea what you’re talking—“
“Janet told me everything.”
Harold froze. Jake walked into the living room, past Janet, whose tears ran down her face. He ignored her, grabbed one of the remaining chairs from the kitchen, and dragged it back into the bedroom, setting it a few feet in front of Harold and closing the door, cutting off his brief moment of seeing his lover. Harold’s eyes flicked from the bag of weapons on the ground to the new, dry gun on Jake’s knee.
“She told me all about your plan to get away from The Compound, to move to Europe and build a new life. Buy a chalet in Switzerland, spend your life skiing and sitting by the fireplace with nothing but each other’s company, completely disconnected from the outside world. That sounds like a nice retirement, doesn’t it?”
Harold said nothing, just glared straight ahead.
“However, that isn’t what we were born for, what we were meant to do. Isn’t that what you’ve always been preaching? You and everyone else at The Compound, Sarah included. Even this morning, she was telling me all about how I needed to follow every regulation and every rule that had ever been put in front of me, telling me that a real relationship, once in which I could be honest and show them my soul, my deepest secrets, was impossible. She told me that we weren’t good and we weren’t evil, that we just were the only people we had ever had a chance to be. And I believed her, because I trusted her, and I looked up to her, just like I trusted and admired you, and how I trusted and admired the director of The Compound, and the two of you have killed the only two people I’ve ever regarded as family. Why should I keep trusting and admiring any of you? Why should I keep listening to you and doing what you tell me to do? What's left?”
“Jake,” said Harold in the most fatherly voice he could muster. “We didn’t do anything of that. You’re clinging to any answer that makes sense."
“The first time we met, you told me not to interrupt you. Now I’m in control, and I’m saying the same thing. Don’t interrupt me. Got it?”
Harold glared at him but kept silent.
“A few weeks ago,” said Jake, looking for the right words, “my roommate Doug and I finished our final year at the academy. That was the day we would finally get to meet with the director and be given our assignments. We were told to stay in our rooms until we were called. We could hear footsteps passing up and down the halls while others were called to meet him, but no one said anything, and we didn’t dare going out in the hall to ask what the director was doing, knowing it would jeopardize all the hard work we’d done to pursue the only goal we were ever given as an option.
“When someone finally came to our room, we were shocked to hear that both of us would be going to the director’s office. We didn’t understand, but we were excited and followed them. We had never been there before and couldn’t hide our awe and excitement. When we got there, the director stood and congratulated us by name. Even the fact that he knew our names was amazing to me. We sat down and he began asking us questions about our experiences and what we hoped to do in the future in service to The Compound. We gave our answers as honestly as we could, showing our reverence and dedication.
“After ten minutes or so of casual talking, he took a gun from his desk and placed it on the table. Doug and I both stared at it for a few seconds and then looked up at him. ‘You see,’ he said, ‘you haven’t quite graduated yet. There is one more test to prove your loyalty to The Compound. You both have the same test. Your final test is to kill your roommate.’”
Jake paused and looked up behind Harold, as though he could feel Doug watching him. Harold was watching Jake, saying nothing, his mouth pulled into a thin line.
“Doug didn’t react,” Jake continued. “I grabbed the gun and shot him without a second thought. It was what the director wanted, and at that point that was what was more important to me than my friends. So I shot him in the heart, and then I shot him again, until he fell onto the ground, looking up at me, angry, disappointed. The director shook my hand and welcomed me to The Compound, pending a trial mission, and then sent me on my way. As I walked out alone, feeling pride rather than the shame I should have, a team ran into the room to clean up his body. It was only later that night that I discovered every set of roommates had been given the same task, and our numbers had been divided by half in one day. But it wasn’t a problem, because even from the start of our training we had intentionally been paired with roommates so those near the top of the rankings were paired with someone near the bottom of the rankings. Doug had only ever been there so I could kill him as my final test. At the time I thought it made sense, but now I’m past that simpleminded way of looking at the world. If even you, the man who Doug and I admired and loved, can’t keep up with the rules of The Compound, then why should I? What does it matter?”
“Jake,” said Harold. “This is all a big misunderstanding, I didn’t do any of the stuff you’re accusing me off.”
“As I was running from the factory, I fit everything together,” said Jake, continuing as though Harold hadn’t spoken, not looking up. “The only answer I couldn’t figure out was where the FBI was getting their information. I knew there had to be someone on t
he inside giving them information, but it wasn’t until they found me in the forest outside the factory that I even considered it could have been you. Then I thought of how they had never come here for their investigation. They had gone to my hotel room, and Karen’s home, and they found Zeke’s video store, but they never came here.
“When I was in the forest, you asked where I was. You had my GPS coordinates. The FBI found me, then gave up on the side of the river after I ditched the GPS. Then I find you here celebrating, thinking I drowned. What is there to celebrate, Harold?”
“Jake, you’re jumping to conclusions.”
“Janet told me everything. You told her more than she would ever have figured out on her own. She knows things about The Compound I didn’t know. What is that supposed to make me think, Harold? That she just guessed all those things?”
“Jake, I didn’t…”
“When we first met, you told me I didn’t know who you were because you were so good at faking your identity and your personality, that you were a master. Well, I’ve figured it out. I know who you are. You’re a traitor, a coward, and a scumbag, and you don’t deserve that plaque you have on the wall at the academy with all your accolades.”
“Jake, I don’t know what you’re talking about. Let us go. Janet is a source.”
“Shut up.” Jake waited a moment then continued. “I thought about leaving you here to retire yourself like the scum you are, but then I decided against it. You deserve to be dead, and I’m going to make sure you are. Then I’m going to let Janet loose so she can run to the police and tell them everything. I’m going to take Janet’s car until I can steal another one. When the police get here, they’re going to find you dead, the car that they know I stole, and a bunker beneath your house that looks identical to the one beneath Zeke’s store that you led them to. They can reach their own conclusions from that, can’t they?”