The Release

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The Release Page 18

by Tom Isbell


  “I imagine you could kill yourself for being so thoughtless,” Gallingham says. “But don’t worry. I’m going to take care of that for you.”

  He raises his gun, and although Hope’s mind races, there is no way out. Not this time. The gun is pointed at her forehead, and unless it miraculously misfires, the man who killed Faith Samadi is about to end Hope’s life as well.

  What surprises her is that in this final moment of living, a weight lifts from her shoulders. Her father was a good and decent man who did his best for his wife and daughters. There is comfort in that, just as there is comfort in the lessons he passed on.

  Live today, tears tomorrow.

  But when her thoughts go to Book, something stabs at her—the sad realization that she never told him how she felt. Although she’s lived a life without fear or hesitation, she’s always stalled when it comes to sharing feelings. Never has she truly revealed the contents of her heart. In my next life, she vows, I won’t let this happen.

  She closes her eyes—there’s no way in the world she will allow her final image to be that of Dr. Gallingham—and pictures Book. The bang of the pistol shatters the stuffy silence.

  51.

  I POINTED TO THE round tower. If Hope had made it this far, there was no question in my mind that she’d be in the very center of the enemy’s headquarters.

  If she was still alive, that is.

  Cat’s pistol pressed against my ribs as we made our way across the square, dodging squads of running soldiers. They were so preoccupied, they barely gave us a glance.

  We noticed two sentries lying at the building entrance. One was out cold; the other had a knife wound to his chest.

  Hope.

  We entered the building, stepping into an empty lobby. What we thought was an empty lobby. We were headed for the stairwell when we heard a voice bark out.

  “Stop!”

  A Brown Shirt came strolling over, checking us out every step of the way.

  “What’re you doing here with a prisoner?” he asked Cat.

  “Delivery,” Cat mumbled. “Dr. Gallingham.”

  “In the middle of the night?”

  “Just following orders.”

  The Brown Shirt squinted and looked us up and down. “Papers,” he said.

  “Huh?”

  “Papers,” the soldier repeated. Even though he was young, not much older than us, his uniform had sergeant’s stripes. “I can’t let you up the tower without proper ID.”

  “Right.”

  Cat made a show of patting his pockets, looking for a set of papers that didn’t exist. His hands lowered, then neared his waist, and I knew he was reaching for his pistol—the one he’d taken from the Brown Shirt at the bottom of the mountain.

  The sergeant was no dummy. He yanked Cat’s pistol from its holster before Cat had a chance. He leveled the gun at Cat, then at me, than back at Cat.

  “Can’t find those papers?” he asked.

  “Can’t seem to,” Cat answered.

  “Huh.” His jaw tightened and untightened as his eyes fixed on the name on Cat’s uniform. “Then, Private Dawkins, why don’t you tell me where you got this Less Than.”

  “Given to me. I was told to bring him up here.”

  “By who?”

  “Some captain. Reese, Reynolds, Ramirez—something.”

  “You don’t know this captain?”

  “No, sir.”

  “You just do what you’re told?”

  “That’s the Republic way.”

  The muscles in the Brown Shirt’s jaw went crazy. “Then why don’t we just head upstairs and get some new orders. You good with that?”

  “Sounds like a plan.”

  The sergeant motioned us to the elevator. I wanted to shoot a glance at Cat, but I didn’t dare. I was a prisoner.

  We were both prisoners. Although we had made it into the tower—and I was convinced Hope was here somewhere—it felt like every step we took was one step farther away from her.

  52.

  IN HOPE’S FINAL MOMENTS on this earth, she is overwhelmed by senses. Bang of the pistol. Acrid scent of gunpowder. Spreading warmth of blood. Blackness.

  But when she opens her eyes … she’s still standing, and the spreading warmth is blood flowing through her veins, not outside them.

  Her hands flounder against her body. There’s no wound.

  At her feet, Dr. Gallingham lies motionless, a single bullet hole in the side of his head. A thin trickle of moisture dribbles from an eye.

  Hope tries to make sense of it all, and when her gaze finally shifts to the doorway, she is surprised to see someone else in the room.

  Scylla.

  There’s a gun in her hand; smoke curls from its barrel.

  “I heard the sirens and guessed it was you,” Scylla says. “Took me forever to figure out where you were.”

  Hope is speechless. Not just that she is still alive and was spared from death at the last possible moment, but that Scylla talked. For the first time since Hope has known her, words have come from Scylla’s mouth.

  “Scylla …”

  “I know,” she says, her voice raspy and unpracticed. “Surprised me too.”

  There is no time to figure it out, and Hope rushes to her friend and gives her a grateful hug.

  When they pull apart, Hope says, “You survived the avalanche.”

  “Barely. I tried to get back to you, but Maddox found me first.”

  “And they’ve held you prisoner here?”

  Scylla nods.

  “How’d you get free?”

  “Once the alarms went off, the guards stopped paying attention. I was able to sneak up on one. That’s where I got this.” She holds up the gun. They hear footsteps outside the door. “We better get going. There’s a service elevator that’ll get us back down.”

  She turns to go and is nearly to the door when she notices Hope hasn’t moved. Scylla looks at her a moment … and then understands. “Chancellor Maddox?”

  Hope nods.

  “It won’t be easy,” Scylla says.

  “It never is.”

  Before they go, Hope takes one last look at Dr. Gallingham, knowing she will never have to see his face again, never have to hear his grating voice. Whatever else happens tonight, there is that small bit of comfort.

  They slip out of the Records room, and Scylla leads Hope to a far staircase. They scurry up until they reach the top floor, the fifteenth. Scylla presses her ear against the door.

  “Brown Shirts,” she mouths.

  They grip their knives and Scylla whips open the door.

  There are four soldiers keeping guard. By the time they register the presence of the two Sisters, Hope has kicked one in the groin and disarmed another. Scylla sweeps her knife across the throats of the other two.

  All four lie scattered on the floor.

  “You okay?” Hope asks.

  Scylla nods, then takes two pistols from the soldiers, handing one to Hope. Hope is no fan of guns, but something tells her they might come in handy. They race down the hall toward the very last door. After a shared look, they step through it.

  Chancellor Maddox stands on the far side of the room, facing them. Her hair is as long and blond as ever, and as perfectly combed. The calm expression on her face seems to indicate that she’s been expecting Hope. The beauty-pageant queen ever ready for the next event.

  “Come in,” she says, smiling pleasantly. “Don’t just stand there.”

  Hope and Scylla take several steps in, their pistols trained on the chancellor. A long oval table sits in the center of the room, surrounded by thick leather chairs. On one wall is a series of maps, tattooed with symbols. The opposite wall is glass, looking out past the Eagle’s Nest and into the black night. Hope is able to make out the rocket launchers at the far edge of the fortress.

  “I wondered when you’d be showing up,” the chancellor says.

  Hope has no good response. She can’t get over the fact that the chancellor’s to
ne is so pleasant. Something’s not right. Hope and Scylla have snuck into the headquarters, gotten past the guards, have their guns pointed at the chancellor, and yet Maddox acts like she’s happy to see them.

  “You’re just in time to watch,” the chancellor says.

  “Not if we stop the launch before it happens.”

  “Oh, I’m sorry—I wasn’t making myself clear. I’m not talking about the attack, I’m talking about the execution.”

  Hope doesn’t understand, and even when Chancellor Maddox raises her hand and reveals a small pistol, Hope still doesn’t get it. After all, she and Scylla have weapons too. But instead of aiming the gun at Hope or Scylla, the chancellor points it to a far corner of the room … where Book and Cat stand bathed in shadows, their hands tied behind their backs.

  Hope’s heart does a flutter at the sight of them. She is awash in emotions.

  “What’re you doing here?” she asks.

  “Trying to help,” Book says.

  “Maybe I don’t need your help.”

  “Now now, children,” the chancellor interrupts. “Let’s play nice. Especially on this momentous day.”

  Hope turns to the former beauty queen. “You can stop with the pretending,” she says. “We know what you intend to do.”

  “Oh?”

  “The chemical weapons, the rocket launchers. You’re going to murder thousands of innocent civilians and every government official there is.”

  “Correction: every government official but one.”

  If Chancellor Maddox is impressed that Hope has figured out her plans, she doesn’t show it.

  “You were even going to kill the Hunters,” Hope goes on, “if the wolves hadn’t done it first.”

  “You know what they say. ‘Keep your friends close, and your enemies closer.’” She smiles innocently. “Now why don’t you and your little mute friend put down those guns before your boyfriends get hurt.”

  “Don’t do it,” Book says to Hope.

  Hope glances at him. She knows he’s right—this is the moment she’s been waiting for. But it’s her life she’s willing to give up, not someone else’s. As much as she wants to pull the trigger, she can’t. It’s not fair to sacrifice Book and Cat when she’s the one who wants revenge.

  She places her weapon on the oval table and slides it forward across the varnished surface. Scylla does the same.

  “So tell me,” Chancellor Maddox says, waving the pistol between the prisoners. “Should I shoot you now, or would you like to witness the second Omega and then be shot? I can’t make any promises about the fireworks, but I can guarantee that this time we’ll get it right.”

  For the longest time, no one speaks. They barely even breathe. There’s no good answer to the chancellor’s question, and no possible way to save their lives.

  It’s Book who breaks the silence.

  “It was you, wasn’t it?”

  Something about his words—and the tone behind them—sends a shudder down Hope’s spine.

  53.

  FOR THE FIRST TIME, it all made sense. It was too late to do anything about it, but I finally understood.

  “What are you jabbering about?” Chancellor Maddox asked.

  “Omega,” I said. “It didn’t happen the way we were told.”

  “I don’t know what you were told, so I have no idea what you’re talking about.”

  “I think you do. The Brown Shirts always said some country on the other side of the world started it. They fired off the first missiles and our country had no choice but to retaliate.” I was talking slowly, forming my thoughts even as I spoke the words. “But that wasn’t it at all, was it? There wasn’t any other country attacking us. You fired the first missiles. You made Omega happen.”

  Chancellor Maddox smiled her condescending beauty-queen smile, all white teeth and perky dimples. “Don’t be silly. Why would you even think that?”

  “Because you just said, ‘and this time we’ll get it right.’”

  “So what? That doesn’t mean—”

  “You gave the order. You started a nuclear holocaust just so you could have more power.”

  “Oh please, this is nonsense—”

  “I don’t know how you did it, but somehow—”

  “I have no idea what you’re talking ab—”

  “—you persuaded the generals or whoever had access to the missiles to go along, to fire them when and where you wanted. Here we’re all horrified about what you’re going to do to New Washington, but you’ve done this before, haven’t you?”

  I could feel the stares of my three friends, their eyes darting between me and the chancellor. Maddox, too, studied me a long time before speaking.

  “I didn’t build the bombs, if that’s what you’re saying,” she finally said. “And if you think I have regrets, I don’t. It was the smartest thing I ever did.”

  I was at a loss for words. We all were. Over the course of the last many months, I thought I’d witnessed every possible kind of evil. But to think Omega was planned by a single individual—a lone member of Congress—was more than I could comprehend.

  “How’d you survive?” I asked.

  “Easy. I just happened to be away from Washington that day. In an underground bunker. Unfortunately, the vice president was on a campaign trip to Iowa and also survived; I hadn’t counted on that.”

  “You assumed you’d be the highest ranking member of Congress left—maybe the only one. You didn’t think you’d have to wait twenty years to become president.”

  A brittle smile scarred the chancellor’s face—a crack in a plaster wall. “All good things come to those who wait.”

  I had a sudden flash of the mother I never knew—the woman who was doused with so much radiation, she gave birth to my deformity, then died shortly thereafter. I thought of all the Less Thans who’d died over the years from acute radiation syndrome. All because of this one vain, vile, power-hungry woman.

  “Why?” I managed.

  Chancellor Maddox looked at me as though the answer was so obvious it didn’t need to be voiced. “It was in our best interests.”

  “To destroy the world?”

  “To save the world. Everything that was great about us was slipping away. And if I hadn’t done it, if I hadn’t done something, we were doomed to failure.”

  “You killed billions of people.”

  “‘The tree of liberty must be refreshed from time to time with the blood of patriots and tyrants.’ Thomas Jefferson.”

  “‘The first thing we do, let’s kill all the chancellors.’ William Shakespeare.”

  She smiled smugly. “Nice try. Don’t you mean ‘lawyers’?”

  “Not in this case.”

  Chancellor Maddox made a tsk, tsk sound and shook her head. “Oh, I get it. The young people are up in arms. They would’ve known the right thing to do. They would’ve acted properly. But let me tell you something. The world was on its last legs. Overpopulation, climate change, terrorists. The Middle East alone was one giant cesspool. It took someone with vision—with courage—to say, ‘Let’s start over. Let’s go back to square one and make this a decent world to live in.’ No different than God creating the flood. The world has me to thank for saving it.”

  “Not the Less Thans,” I said.

  “Or the Sisters,” Hope added.

  Maddox shrugged. “‘Can’t please all the people all the time.’”

  She said it with such giggly innocence—like it was just another beauty-pageant answer—that the life went out of me. Nothing we said or did had any effect. The woman was incapable of reason.

  She grabbed a walkie-talkie from the oval table and positioned her thumb over the orange button.

  “How close are we?” she asked into it.

  “Whenever you’re ready, Madame President-Elect,” a staticky voice replied. “Just say the word.”

  She gave us a look like You see? There’s nothing you can do.

  My friends and I exchanged a horrified look. �
��I thought you weren’t going to launch the missiles until the same time as the inauguration.”

  “That was the original plan, but you know what they say: It’s a woman’s prerogative to change her mind. And I’m in the mood to get this over with now.”

  She was in the process of bringing the walkie-talkie to her mouth when Cat blurted out, “Wait!”

  Chancellor Maddox looked at him expectantly.

  “You gave us the option,” Cat said. “You said we could choose whether we were executed before or after the attack. Right?”

  “That’s right.”

  “Well, I choose before. I don’t want to watch another Omega.”

  The smile that adorned the chancellor’s face was bright enough to light the room.

  54.

  “ANY OTHER TAKERS?” CHANCELLOR Maddox asks the other three.

  Hope can’t believe that Cat is giving in so easily.

  “Fine,” Maddox says. “Then we’ll do one now, and the rest of you after we fire the missiles.” Her tone is utterly casual, as if she’s asking for volunteers in class.

  She waves her pistol and motions for Cat to come forward. “Slowly,” she says. In her other hand is the walkie-talkie.

  Cat can barely meet his friends’ eyes. “Sorry, guys,” he says, and shuffles away from the corner. His hands are bound tightly behind his back.

  After a half dozen steps, Chancellor Maddox holds up her hand.

  “Kneel,” she commands.

  Hope keeps thinking he’s up to something, that he has some kind of a plan, but then he just gets down on his knees. Now there’s nothing he can do. He’s still a good five feet from her—too far away to lunge for her. He is giving up his life.

  “Cat, you don’t have to do this,” Hope pleads. “We can all go together. We’ll die as a group.”

  The chancellor looks at him, waiting for his response. “Well?” she asks. “Are you going to listen to your girlfriend?”

  “She’s not my girlfriend,” Cat growls. “Let her and Book die together.”

  His words send a rush of blood to Hope’s face.

  “So there we have it,” Maddox says with icy pleasure. “The crux of the matter.”

 

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