HL 04-The Final Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  I don’t know how long we ran. Sometimes we slowed to a kind of jog, but there was no stopping. I was afraid my strength would give out, but no. I could practically feel the adrenaline pumping through me, the energy surging in my limbs, unbelievably steady and unstoppable. My whole inner world was filled with the rhythm of my heart hammering and my lungs working. The pain— the pain I knew was pulsing in every part of me—the pain I knew was still there, always there—seemed somehow far away for the moment, buried beneath the electric surface of that pumped-up adrenaline high. The punches from Blade, the beating from the guards, the cut I’d dug into my own flesh with the knife: Yeah, they throbbed and ached and stung as I pushed myself to keep moving, but the ache seemed almost to belong to someone else, not me.

  I ran and ran, breathless. I tried to get my brain working as we went down another corridor of stink and mess. One thing was on my mind and one thing only: We were rushing into a trap.

  I had tipped Dunbar off. I had told him we were heading for the mall. I didn’t know how long it would take him to sound the alarm or how fast the police would respond or how far they had to travel. But if the cops weren’t waiting for us at the mall when we got there, they would get there soon enough. That would make it tough for me to get away. I would have to make my escape not just from Blade but from the cops as well. I wished I hadn’t had to do it, to tell Dunbar the plan. But I couldn’t just let this killer Blade and his pals escape. I had to make sure they were captured again. I just didn’t see any other choice.

  All this raced through my mind as I raced through the darkness. Stumbling along in the stench and wet. Crushed in with these thugs as they rushed desperately toward what they thought was freedom—a freedom I knew they would never have.

  At last, panting, flagging, stumbling, we came around a bend in the dark corridor and I heard several voices at once.

  “There.”

  “Oh man!”

  “I see it, I see it!”

  I saw it too: light. A dim gray glow that seemed to pour down into the darkness like water. It was the way out, the way back to the upper world.

  I could feel the others around me tense with hope and expectation. I could hear the beat of their breathing change. As the flashlight beams crisscrossed this way and that around us, I could see their faces, their bright, desperate faces, suddenly full of hope; their gazes yearning for that light up ahead, yearning for freedom.

  More whispers:

  “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Baby, there we go.”

  “We are going home.”

  We all want the same thing, I guess. Killers or no, good or bad. We all want to be free. We all want to go home.

  I looked ahead, down the tunnel, at the cascade of faint gray light growing brighter as we grew near. I was thinking: What now? What do I do when the police surround us? How do I break away?

  I didn’t know the answer and not knowing made me afraid. What if I made a run for it and the cops opened fire and shot me down? What if the cops showed up and Blade guessed I had tipped them off and he killed me?

  What if—here was the really bad one—what if I tried to run and got captured again? My lawyer’s appeal would be ruined. Even with all the help Rose had given me, no one would believe I was innocent now.

  That thought made my inner world darken even as we moved to the light ahead. It was one thing to think about getting shot to death, it was something else— something much worse—to think about getting stuck in Abingdon for the rest of my life.

  As we covered the last few yards to that gray glow, I tried to remind myself why I had done this. The Great Death. I had to stop it. I had to try, no matter what. No matter what.

  I fought off my fears and pushed on.

  The pavement beneath us was climbing now. Barely running, barely jogging, we just stumbled upward, exhausted, step by wobbly step. As we came near the light, I could make out the faces and forms of the men with me. They were all so exhausted that even the cruelty seemed to be gone from their eyes. There was just the desperation and yearning. To be free. To go home.

  Blade was the lead man. He took a last step into the falling light. He stopped. He looked up. Captured in the gray glow, his scarred face with its devilish pointed beard seemed washed clean by light. He looked young and fresh and almost innocent, the meanness gone. I guess he’d really been that way once, when he was a kid maybe, before he did the things he’d done. For a second, in that light, you could see how he used to be.

  “Let’s go,” he whispered up into the glow.

  The next moment, a rope dropped down. Blade grabbed it, wrapped his legs around it, and started climbing up into the light.

  As soon as there was room beneath his feet, another muscleman grabbed hold and started climbing. I was third in line. I went up the rope quickly, following the soles of the feet above me.

  As I reached the top, a hand grabbed my arm, helping me up. I crawled out through a jagged hole. The smell and filth and weariness still clung to me. Blinking and squinting, I looked around at a world that seemed to have been drained of all color, that seemed only black-and-white, like an old movie.

  I was in an empty structure, a half-finished building. The walls, floor, and ceiling were all white cement and plaster. At the windows—or the spaces where windows were supposed to be, empty rectangles with no glass in them—there was a weird gray-blackness that I couldn’t identify for a second. Then I could: It was the sky. It was covered to the horizon with thick big-bellied clouds. A thunderstorm was gathering—gathering fast. I could feel the cold wet wind blowing in on me through the window holes.

  There were two men in overalls who had been waiting for us here. There were two others who had come into the prison to get us. Then there was Blade and his three companions, the final two of them still coming up the ropes.

  Moving to one of the windows, I looked out. It was a strange sight: a ghost mall. Empty white structures everywhere like some desert city dug up by archaeologists or something. Window holes and sidewalks, some of them completed, others full of gaps and broken bits, all of it making for a geometric pattern of white cubes with dark rectangles in them. The whiteness of the mall buildings was set against the growing darkness of the clouds around. The clouds seemed to go on and on forever over empty territory. Beyond the mall, as far as I could see, there was nothing but dead fields full of dirt and boulders and sudden slopes that fell away out of sight.

  I peered out and scanned the area. I was trying to pick out my best escape route. Behind me, I heard the last of the thugs grunting and cursing, climbing up through the broken hole in the building’s floor. I wondered: Could I just throw myself out the broken window and run for it?

  A movement at the corner of my eye caught my attention. I turned to it. My breath stopped.

  A long line of white cars was moving toward the mall under the black clouds.

  The police. Moving without sirens or lights over the long road through the empty country.

  Coming. Coming here. Coming for us.

  If I was going to run for it, I had to start running now.

  There was a deep throaty roll of thunder.

  I glanced back at the others to see if anyone was watching me.

  Someone was. Blade. Not just watching me. He was pointing a gun at my head.

  CHAPTER SEVENTEEN

  Thunderstorm

  The thunder rolled again. Lightning flashed—sheet lightning that turned all the dark windows silver-white.

  Blade held his arm stretched out straight in front of him, the barrel of the 9mm automatic in his hand leveled at the spot right between my eyes. That barrel and its cold, black bore were less than a yard away from me.

  Blade didn’t know yet the police were coming. He didn’t know he had only seconds of freedom left. He took his time. He smiled his faraway smile, full of his bizarre, dreamy joy at dealing death.

  “Thanks for the help, punk,” he said.

  And he pulled the trigger.

>   By then, I had already sent my kick flying up in his direction, my foot sweeping in a broad crescent from the floor to his hand. The side of my shoe connected with his wrist at the same moment the gun went off. I felt the cold kiss of death speed past my cheek as the bullet missed me by inches.

  Then Blade’s hand went wide and the gun flew from his fingers, twirling through the air, down toward the floor.

  Before it even landed, I was at the open window. I grabbed hold of the sill and leapt through.

  “Grab him!” Blade shouted—but whatever else he might’ve said was drowned out by another loud blast of thunder.

  I landed upright on the pavement outside the building. At the same moment my feet touched the ground, the sky opened and the rain came. There was no buildup. No slow drizzle of warning. It came down in a sudden flood, as if a trapdoor had opened in the sky and the water was just dumped through it.

  I ran. Away from the line of cop cars still racing toward us out of the wilderness. The second I started moving, I heard their sirens wind up behind me. They screamed into the sky—and then were drowned out by the next roll of thunder as the rain spilled down, drenching me.

  I raced across the mall pavement, already kicking up puddles where the water had collected in the broken spaces. The silver splashes fanned into the dark air in front of me as I dashed through the open for the shelter of the abandoned white buildings across the way.

  Another crack of thunder—and at the same time I saw a spark and a cloud of white plaster explode off the wall ahead of me. Silent gunfire—the sound of the shot drowned out by the storm.

  I glanced back and saw Blade, the murder burning in his eyes, leveling the 9mm to take yet another crack at me.

  But at the same time, the sirens of the cop cars got louder as the army of police descended on the place. Behind Blade, I could see his panicked buddies rolling out the windows, scrambling toward a couple of pickups—the getaway vehicles they had parked around the side.

  Blade’s eyes shifted just slightly to see how much time he had left. His so-called friends weren’t going to wait for him with the police so close—he knew that. He leveled the gun at me for one last shot.

  But before he could take it, I had faced front. I had reached the buildings on the other side of the mall lane. I pushed off my foot to dodge to the side. I slipped on the wet pavement, tumbling down onto my shoulder, rolling through the downpour until I could leap to my feet again.

  This time, I heard the gun go off, a loud blast echoing through the storm. This time, the bullet was nowhere near me. My own dodge and fall had carried me out of Blade’s line of fire. Another cloud of white dust exploded off one of the abandoned buildings, the powder rising into the dark rain. The sirens screamed and the thunder drowned them out and then the thunder fell away and the sirens screamed again.

  As I regained my feet, I looked back once more. Blade was reluctantly turning away to join the others in their trucks. The engines started. The headlights split the darkness, lighting the downpour. With a screech of tires, the trucks pulled away from the curb, sending sheets of water into the air.

  I was running again, meanwhile, in the opposite direction. Across the large mall parking lot and into the alleys. Between the far buildings where it would be hard for the police cars to follow. Each time I broke out into the open, I dodged to the side and rushed toward another alley. Down it. Through. The rain was falling so hard now it nearly blinded me, but it didn’t really matter. There was nowhere to go except out of the mall, out into the open country away from the roads. Anything that might make it difficult for the cop cars to follow me.

  I ran through that empty, abandoned mall as fast as I’d ever run. Battered, beaten, exhausted from our long trek through the sewers, drenched now from the downpour. None of it mattered. I just ran.

  As I reached the edge of the pavement, as I crossed the border into the surrounding wilderness, I glanced back one last time.

  The escape was over. That fast. That completely. Through the curtains of rain, I could make out the shapes of Blade’s two getaway trucks. They had come to a standstill, cut off and surrounded by the police cars. The cops were on the pavement, kneeling behind their cars, guns drawn and leveled. I could see their wavering silhouettes through the rain. The wavering silhouettes of the thugs were pouring out of the trucks with their hands up. There was no shooting. There was no point, nowhere for them to run. Our race through the sewer was all the freedom they were going to get.

  I turned and pushed on, gasping, over the edge of the pavement. My feet sank into soggy earth as I scrambled through an empty field of mud and stone that went on as far as I could see. Which wasn’t far. The rain pretty much blinded me.

  I plunged over the edge of a ridge before I even knew the ridge was there. The next second, I was lurching downhill, my legs barely under control as my long strides carried me over the steep slope. I descended into a small flat with low hills on every side of me. I had no idea which direction was which, or what was up ahead. I just ran on, climbing up a slope, half upright, half slipping and sliding, my fingers digging for purchase in the mud.

  I came over the slope and stood still for a second, panting. Trying to get my bearings, trying to see where I should go. There was nothing around me but hills—hills of dirt—and rain turning the dirt to sludge. The great dark clouds churned above me. Thunder rolled. Lightning struck with a snakelike hiss—a jagged electric line this time. It reached all the way down from the sky to strike the earth maybe a mile or so up ahead of me. I held my breath at the awesome sight of it.

  The rain plastered my hair to my scalp. The water poured into my eyes and into my open mouth as I stood panting for breath. I shivered from the cold.

  Finally, I chose a direction. I started running again.

  I had taken only a single step when an engine roared and a pair of headlights came flying over the hill in front of me.

  CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

  Run Down

  It was a massive Jeep, jumping the ridge. The sight of it froze me in my tracks. Where had it come from? We were far from any road, far from anything. There was nothing out here but me and the mud—and those glaring headlights and those monster tires and that grinning grille.

  The next instant, the Jeep smacked down, throwing up sheets of dirt and water. At the same time, I started running again, my feet nearly skidding out from under me as I changed direction and tried to get out of the Jeep’s way.

  The headlights bore down on me as I cut straight across them. The Jeep passed behind me so close, I felt the mud spatter over my back as I ran. I climbed desperately up the slope ahead of me as the Jeep, unable to stop, splashed up the slope to my left.

  I heard its tires whining as they spun in the mud. I heard a voice begin to shout—or thought I did. But the next moment I could hear nothing but thunder.

  As I reached the top of the ridge, I could feel the earth, turned to gushing mud, sliding away under my feet. I threw myself forward and rolled. Gasping for breath, covered head to foot in filth, I climbed to my knees, peering around through the blinding rain.

  There was nothing to see—nothing in any direction but empty territory and boiling black clouds and the streaking downpour.

  As the thunder died, I heard the Jeep’s tires spinning again. Then I heard them catch traction. I heard the engine’s roar grow throaty and deep. A moment later, I heard that roar getting louder and louder. The Jeep had finally turned around and was heading back toward me again.

  I ran. My speed was gone now. My energy had at last given out. My legs were weak and wobbly beneath me. My lungs were burning. My wet, muddy clothes were so heavy I felt like I was wearing a suit of lead, dragging it through the storm. Only my will was still strong. I was determined not to surrender, determined to make them run me down, make them overtake me. The idea of being taken back to that prison was a living nightmare.

  I stumbled on, my arms wheeling, my hands grasping as if to find purchase in the driving rain. The
lightning snapped and flashed across the black sky. The Jeep’s engine strained as the car tried to make its way up the slope behind me.

  I looked back over my shoulder just in time to see the dark rain go bright as those huge headlights crested the ridge. In the next second, the Jeep leapt into sight and plunged down into the mud, splattering dirt everywhere as it charged relentlessly after me.

  I poured everything I had left into the next few seconds. But it was no good, no use. I was exhausted. I was done. The Jeep’s horn screamed at my back like the cry of a hungry animal. The engine roared louder as the big machine overtook my failing footsteps.

  The next time I looked, the headlights were enormous, filling my vision. The Jeep was right on top of me, seconds from plowing over me.

  I leapt to the side and, as I did, I lost my footing and fell. I went down into the mud, clawing at it, rolling, trying to stand. I heard the Jeep’s brakes shriek as its wheels locked. Scrabbling over the shifting, muddy ground, I saw the big vehicle go skidding past me through the mud, turning so that its headlights seemed to search for me in the night. The rain was so heavy the headlights blurred. The Jeep was almost invisible though it was only a few yards away from me.

  Now, unable to stand, I started crawling. It was the best I could do. I clawed my way across the earth, my face inches from the mud, my hands and knees and feet sinking deep into the mess of it.

  The Jeep had stopped moving. Behind me, I heard its door open and shut. The thunder rolled and the lightning flashed. When the noise subsided, I heard the wet footsteps of my pursuer. I saw his tall figure moving toward me in the glow of the headlights. I didn’t know whether he was coming to arrest or to kill me dead.

  Finally, out of breath, out of strength, I collapsed into the mud. The footsteps came nearer and stopped. The Jeep’s driver was standing over me.

  I lay where I was, panting into the earth. I couldn’t go any farther. I just managed to roll onto my back and peer up through the rain at the figure above me.