by Tom Isbell
She places the walkie-talkie on the table, then checks the chamber of the gun. She levels it at Cat’s forehead. Her index finger hovers against the trigger. The second she pulls, Cat’s life will end for good.
Hope wonders what he’s thinking. Does Cat really not want to witness the missile attack? Or does it have to do with her and Book?
For a long moment that feels like forever, Cat kneels there, and Chancellor Maddox readies the pistol. Hope, Scylla, and Book watch helplessly.
“Any final words?” the chancellor asks.
“No,” he snaps.
“Would you like a blindfold?”
“No way. I want my eyes open.”
“And why is that?”
“So I can see your reaction.”
“My reaction?” Her face twists in confusion. “My reaction to what?”
Cat’s right arm whips around his body. At the end of it is his prosthetic left arm, still tied to his right hand. By releasing the prosthetic from his shoulder, he’s managed to create an improvised whip of real arm and fake arm, and in one blindingly fast move, he cracks it forward. The end of his prosthetic arm snaps against the gun. Two bullets explode before the pistol goes cartwheeling through the air. Chancellor Maddox’s eyes go wide and she stumbles backward and the gun goes clattering to the floor. Smoke curls from its barrel.
The silence that follows is overwhelming. No one moves. The air is thick with the scent of gunpowder.
Hope feels a sharp pain in her leg like a wasp sting. When she looks down, she sees blood spilling from her right thigh. She caught one of the bullets from the chancellor’s gun. She starts to examine the wound when she sees Cat.
He lies on his back, blood gurgling from his chest like a spring. He took the other bullet.
“Stay with me!” Book yells to Cat, already hovering over his friend.
Hope limps forward and unties Book’s hands, and she watches as he works with silent fury, desperation, as if Cat’s life is his life. He rips off his outer shirt and bunches it into a ball, pressing it against the blood. Within seconds, his shirt is a soggy mess.
“You’re going to be okay,” Book says, not giving up. “Stay with me here.”
That’s the moment Hope realizes how wrong she was—way back when—to ever think Book would abandon Cat. Not a chance. It was Book and Cat together from the very beginning. Friends to the bitter end.
The sound of Chancellor Maddox’s voice whips Hope’s head around.
“Now,” the chancellor is saying into the walkie-talkie. “Launch the missiles now!”
In the confusion following the gunshots, everyone forgot about her, but now Hope sees her, frantically stabbing the orange button with her thumb and placing her mouth close to the walkie-talkie.
“Launch the missiles now!” she says again.
At first, the only answer she gets is static. Everyone holds their breath, waiting to hear the confirmation of the launch, the beginning of Omega II, missiles erupting from the Eagle’s Nest and arcing through the sky.
But the static continues, only gradually replaced by another sound—muffled gunfire—not from the walkie-talkie but from outside the windows. An explosion rocks the building.
Chancellor Maddox shoots a daggered look at Hope. “What’s going on?”
Hope honestly doesn’t know, but Book answers without looking up. “The president’s soldiers,” he says. “They’ve arrived.”
The chancellor’s face burns red, twisting into an expression of rage and fury. Her lips part, revealing bared teeth. Her jaw is entirely too tense to allow the formation of words. She sputters a string of unintelligible words, then turns and races out of the room. The door slams behind her.
Book’s eyes don’t leave Cat. “Go,” he says aloud.
At first, Hope doesn’t understand. Then she realizes he’s talking to her—and the need to stop Chancellor Maddox.
For a long moment, Hope is unable to move, torn between Cat’s fatal wounds, Book’s grief, and Chancellor Maddox getting away. She’s paralyzed.
“Go!” Book screams.
She takes a final look at Cat and then rushes out the door.
Even as she staggers after Chancellor Maddox, it occurs to her that Cat knew exactly what he was doing. He knew he would be shot, but he knew it was the only way to prevent the next Omega. For perhaps the last time, Cat has saved the lives of others—even if it meant giving up his own in the process.
Hope vows that if it comes to it, she will gladly do the same. Blood streams down her leg as she limps through the hall.
55.
CAT GREW PALER BY the second, and in no time at all, his face was the color of chalk. He was slipping away.
I heard Hope faltering down the hallway. I hoped she could catch up with Chancellor Maddox, but at that particular moment I almost didn’t care. What I cared about was Cat, my friend Cat, who I’d discovered dying in the desert and who’d taught me more about myself than anyone I’d ever known.
And now he was dying before my eyes. As Scylla helped put pressure on the wound, I began to babble.
“Remember that day?” I said to Cat. “We found you fried like an egg, wearing that black T-shirt. That’s what we called you at first: Black T-Shirt. Later we realized Cat was a better name.”
Blood flowed from Cat’s chest.
“And then you kept saving us. The wolves and that shot at the propane tank and that time you got Sergeant Dekker with your arrow when we went back to Camp Liberty. Remember? You even lost your arm, but you came back stronger than ever. And this’ll be the same. We’ll get some doctors and they’ll fix you up and you’ll be the same old Cat, better than ever.”
His eyes told me he didn’t believe me. Our fingers clutched when his hand flailed forward.
“You’re going to recover,” I said, still talking nonstop, my throat suddenly tight. “And we’re going to do all those things we said we’d do: eat all kinds of good food and you’re going to teach me how to hunt and we’re not going worry about Brown Shirts anymore.”
His eyes fluttered closed.
“And maybe I’ll even get you to read. You’ll probably love it once you start—it’s just getting started that’s sometimes tough. And I’m guessing you’ll really like Jack London and Jules Verne and who knows what else.”
His chest struggled to rise. When he exhaled, there was a bubbling sound.
“Okay, you rest,” I said. “When you wake up, you’ll see. The doctors will have you patched up and we’ll get a bunch of us and rebuild that cabin at Frank’s place. And we’ll fish and hunt and we’ll plant a garden and no one’ll bother us and we’ll start our own community, far away from all the politicians and the soldiers and the Chancellor Maddoxes of the world. And we’ll build another library, just like Frank’s, and it’ll be perfect. Life’ll be perfect.”
Cat’s mouth parted, and I realized he was trying to say something. I leaned in to hear and I remembered: this was exactly how we’d met back in the No Water, him struggling to talk and me placing my ear against his cracked and bleeding lips. Just like then, he mumbled something, but I couldn’t tell what.
“What’s that, Cat? I didn’t get what you said.”
His lips moved slowly, as though putting every last effort into producing sound. When he spoke, it was the vaguest of whispers, all sandpapery and rough—but I understood.
“Book … and Hope … together.”
I slowly drew back and looked at him. Was it my imagination, or was there a smile on his face? If it existed, it was brief and fleeting. A moment later, his head lolled to the side, his chest stopped rising, the blood stopped spilling out.
He was still.
Cat—my friend Cat—who told us what was really going on in the world and who showed us how to live our lives, was dead.
I buried my face in his chest and sobbed.
56.
HOPE EMERGES FROM THE headquarters and steps into chaos. Several platoons of President Vasquez’s Brown Shirt
s have plowed their way to the top of the mountain and are battling it out with Chancellor Maddox’s soldiers. It’s Brown Shirt against Brown Shirt—inverted triangles versus no triangles. The rattle of bullets fills the night.
Hope bends at the waist, putting her hands on her knees. The pain from her thigh shoots down her leg, numbing her foot and her toes. Blood pools in her shoe. She looks around and catches a glimpse of Chancellor Maddox’s ankle-length coat, trailing her as she races away.
Hope pushes herself to a standing position and gives chase, knowing exactly where Maddox is headed: the elevator.
Soldiers from both sides close in, and Hope has to take a sweeping arc to avoid their gunfire. Her lower pant leg is soaked in blood, and at one point she stops and uses her belt to tie a tourniquet around her upper thigh.
By the time she reaches the elevator, it doesn’t work. Hope can press the button all night long, but it’s not lighting up. Maddox has somehow disabled the thing—it’s stuck at the very bottom. Hope has no choice but to take the stairs, all seven hundred of them. At least this time she’s going down.
She limps and shuffles down the metal steps, feet clanging, the sound echoing off the cement walls. The loss of blood and all the switchbacking back and forth makes her dizzy. Her face goes clammy. She hugs the railing, wondering how far ahead the chancellor’s going to be.
By the time she reaches the bottom of the stairwell, her head swims. She opens the door and steps into the blackened tunnel, stumbling the length of the passageway. Only when she emerges from the tunnel and sees the stars does she regain her balance. The fresh air is a welcome slap to the face.
She hurries to the tram stop, but when she reaches it, her heart sinks. The tram is halfway down the mountain, and in the distant window, growing ever smaller, is the silhouette of Chancellor Maddox.
“Damn it!” Hope curses.
She’ll have to wait for it to reach the bottom and the other tram to reach the top. Then again, something tells her that Maddox might very well disable the tram, just as she disabled the elevator. So how will I get down the mountain? she wonders.
That’s when the possibility occurs to her. It’s dangerous, it’s foolhardy, it’s downright stupid. But it’s the only solution she can think of.
There’s a small wooden hut by the tram stop, and she makes a beeline for it. It’s locked, of course, but nothing she can’t open after a couple of well-placed kicks, even with only one good leg. It’s a storage shed, filled floor to ceiling with tools, cleaning supplies … and ski equipment.
She finds a pair of skis that seem long enough, grabs some gloves and goggles, and lugs them to the tram stop. As she slips on the equipment, her eyes take in the steep mountainside below. It slopes downward in a hurry, and she can only guess the angle. Forty-five degrees. Maybe fifty. Maybe more.
When her father taught her how to ski, he explained how in pre-Omega days, ski runs were categorized. Green Circle for easiest, Blue Square for intermediate, Black Diamond for advanced, and Double Black Diamond for expert only. She would rank this slope as Double Double Black Diamond—Trapezoid of Death.
She has strapped on the skis and slipped the goggles over her eyes. She grimaces as she stands, puts weight on her leg … and pushes off.
She falls almost immediately. Even when she gets up, it takes her a long moment to get used to the skis, to find her balance, to adjust to the fresh powder. The angle is steep—steeper even than she guessed—and she falls twice more in quick succession, stopping only when she rolls into a tree. Her right leg can barely support her weight. She tries again, slowly finding her rhythm. The skis’ edges bite into the snow, sending a wave of powder into the air. A trail of blood follows her down the mountain like fairy-tale bread crumbs.
Her only illumination is the moon, casting a pale-blue light on the gleaming white of the snow. The snow-shrouded pines and firs are mere shadows—absences of light in a dark night. Things to avoid.
She finds herself in a clearing where she can see all the way to the bottom of the hill. The tram is coming to a stop, and a yellow rectangle of light falls on the snow as the door opens and a figure emerges. Chancellor Maddox has reached the town; Hope is still halfway up the mountain.
She has no choice but to ski faster.
She straightens out her path, doesn’t zigzag quite so far to either side. Her speed increases, and the icy wind numbs her cheeks, her nose, her lips. She hurtles down the mountainside, clipping branches, scraping rocks. On more than one occasion she face-plants into the snow, then hurries to extract herself. Her right leg burns with pain.
Still, it all comes down to this: she can’t let Maddox get away. Live today, tears tomorrow.
57.
CAT WAS DEAD.
Although I wanted to stay there and mourn his death, there was work to do. And Hope was out there on her own.
I felt a hand on my shoulder.
“Go,” Scylla said—the first time I’d ever heard her speak. I wiped away my tears and hauled myself to my feet.
The lights blinked off and on as I hurried through the hallways. The gunfire was louder now—President Vasquez’s army was drawing close.
I rode the elevator down to the lobby, dashed outside, then hurried to the main elevator. It didn’t work, so I was forced to run down the hundreds of stairs. I raced through the darkened tunnel, my footsteps echoing back at me, and reached the tram stop as the next tram was getting ready to descend. I jumped in just as it began its descent.
I was halfway down the mountain—thinking about Cat, wondering about Hope—when the tram shuddered to a stop. I tumbled forward against the glass.
“What’s going on?” I said aloud.
A glance up the mountain explained it. The fortress was dark. The power was out. The only light was the fading flames from the fire. Which meant I was stuck dangling in the air, a good half mile from the mountain’s base.
The tram began to sway in the wind, rocking this way and that. My breathing grew rapid, and I had a sudden need to get out.
With trembling fingers I slid open the door. An icy wind rushed inside and chilled me to the bone. I dared to stick my head out and peer to the ground below. Pale moonlight bounced off the snowy, rock-strewn landscape far below me. I was way too high to jump. The snow might cushion my fall—the granite boulders wouldn’t.
I slid the door shut and tried to think of a plan. The tram continued to rock in the howling wind. My heart slammed against my chest.
As I was trying to figure out what to do, I felt a strange vibration. Different from the wind. Different from the tram in motion. This vibration rattled the windowpanes and radiated up my feet. My teeth began to chatter, and not from cold.
“What’s going on?” I repeated.
The vibration increased. The tram buzzed with streaking currents of electricity. Except it wasn’t electricity, it was something else. Something from the cable.
The tram lurched, plunging a couple of feet downward. The descent was so quick that I fell to the floor. The tram rocked and swayed. The vibration increased.
That’s when I realized what was happening—someone was trying to cut the cable, chopping it with an ax. And with each whack, the tram lurched downward. It was only a matter of time before the metal ropes would fray and I would go plunging to the rocky mountainside below.
I whipped off my belt and doubled it back on itself, then jammed it between my teeth. If I somehow survived the fall—which seemed unlikely—I didn’t want my jaw to snap open and shut so hard that I’d lose my teeth. I’d read about that somewhere.
The vibration ceased, and I wondered if maybe I was overreacting. Like this was all my imagination.
And then I heard a distant whack and the tram plunged downward.
Wind whistled through the tram as it sailed through air like a missile. Falling, falling, falling. My stomach rose to my throat, and all I could do was bite into the belt and throw out my hands and hope I could somehow cushion the fall.
&nb
sp; One moment I was trying to protect myself, and the next the tram slammed into the mountainside. There was the muffled crunch of metal pounding into snow and granite. I went flying, bounced hard against the floor, ricocheted off all four walls. The windows shattered. Glass exploded everywhere, and I felt the jagged edges slice into my skin.
The tram bounced atop the ground, once, twice, and then began to slide. It picked up speed. In no time it was rocketing down the mountain like a runaway sled. It slammed against boulders, the impact jarring my insides, and the air whooshed by with a howl that was a ghostly wail. I folded my body into a tiny ball, waiting for the moment of impact—the screaming meteor slamming into earth.
Nothing could have prepared me for the sheer force of it. It banged into something immovable with such a jarring collision that my body was hurled forward and my head whiplashed back. The side of my face slammed into the metal wall and I felt the blood oozing. My teeth rattled. The sound of the crash bounced off the mountains and seemed to take forever before the echo fully disappeared.
I lay there a moment, assessing injuries. Bleeding, yes. Sore, definitely. But I hadn’t broken bones. My heart was racing faster than it ever had.
I managed to squeeze through an open window and collapsed into the snow. Every bone and muscle screamed. When I finally lifted my head and looked around, I saw that the tram had slid a good quarter of a mile down the mountain before running into an enormous pine, wrapping itself around the tree’s trunk like a flattened tin can. The door was crumpled. It had shrunk to half its size. It was a miracle I was alive.
I ran my sleeve across my cheek, wiped away the blood, and staggered to my feet. I began limping down the mountain, wading through drifts, knowing I had to push myself if I was going to save Hope. Not just from Chancellor Maddox, but from herself.
58.
HOPE REACHES THE BASE of the mountain and tumbles to the ground. She untangles herself from her skis.
The tiny town is ablaze with activity. A convoy of New Washington soldiers snakes its way through the main street, heading up the mountain.