HL 04-The Final Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  “Me too,” she said.

  My hand was still half lifted to the screen. But now I lowered it. My fingers curled into a fist and I pressed the fist against my heart. My way of telling her again, one last time, that she was with me still, with me always.

  She did the same with her hand.

  “See you,” I said.

  “See you,” she said.

  Then I shut down the connection.

  CHAPTER TWENTY-FIVE

  One Last Memory

  They wanted to strap me down, but I wouldn’t let them. I was tired of feeling trapped and helpless. Tired of being pushed around and told what to do. This was my choice, my decision. I didn’t need any straps.

  I rolled up my sleeve and held it out to Dr. Farber. “Just do it,” I told her.

  I was sitting in the big chair behind the desk. Milton One and Dodger Jim were standing near me. Mike was leaning against the desk, his arms crossed on his chest, watching me. Rose was standing at the window, staring out at the night.

  Dr. Farber lifted the hypodermic. She took a breath.

  “Isn’t this where you’re supposed to say it won’t hurt a bit?” I asked her.

  She tried to smile but didn’t do a very good job. She leaned forward and pressed the hypodermic needle against my arm.

  I didn’t want to watch. I looked at Mike. He winked at me. I winked back.

  The needle went into me.

  I thought I was ready for the pain. I wasn’t. With all the memory attacks I’d experienced, I thought I’d been through it before and could take it. But this was worse—much worse—than it had ever been. For what must have been a minute but seemed like days, I lay in thrashing contortions on the floor. I heard myself screaming in mindless agony.

  Then—thank God—I felt as if I were plunging out of my own agonized body, plunging into a darkening whirlpool of time, and my own screams slowly faded away into ever-receding echoes.

  Now, at last, the echoes faded too. I fell from the whirlpool into empty space. That’s what it seemed like, anyway. It seemed like I was dropping down and down and down through a vast empty space whose only limit was the past spread out beneath me. Moments of the past played themselves out far below as I tumbled toward them, watching. I caught glimpses of my whole life as it seemed to replay itself all in a single moment. There was me and Alex Hauser as little kids on a baseball field . . . Me as a miniature yellow belt in Sensei Mike’s karate class for children . . . Me at the dinner table with my mom and dad and my sister, Amy, rolling her eyes at some new horror-of-horrors that she’d experienced that day in school . . . Me and my friends clowning around at our lunch table in the cafeteria . . . Me with Beth . . . Me slipping into the car next to Waterman to hear what he wanted me to do . . . Me with Alex again, teenagers now, arguing in my mom’s car before he stormed off into the park where Mr. Sherman stabbed him to death . . . My trial for his murder . . . The Homelander compound . . .

  There was so much time flashing before my eyes as I spun and tumbled down. At first, I couldn’t think. My mind was clouded with confusion. Where was I? Where was I going? What was happening to my body? Was that me I could still hear screaming in the far distance? Was I dying? Was this what the end looked like?

  But then, I remembered . . . not the past . . . the present . . . the Great Death . . . New Year’s Eve . . . no time for fear and confusion. No time. No time.

  I fought down my rising panic. I forced myself to focus. I had done this a million times before. In sparring matches. In belt tests. In fights with killers. I knew how to focus when I had to, and I had to now.

  One memory. That’s what I needed. I needed to find one memory and fall into it. I focused my mind with all the energy I had . . .

  There it was. I saw it below me. The compound. The barracks. The unconscious guard on the ground . . .

  I guided my fall toward it.

  If you’ve ever jumped off a really high diving board, you will know what it felt like then. That plunge where you think that any second you should hit the water, but the second passes and you’re still going down and down, and your stomach starts to rise inside you and then . . .

  Then I was there. I had done it. I was in the compound. I was underneath the barracks window. The guard was unconscious beside me. Waylon was standing at the window above me. Prince’s voice was drifting out to me.

  They are weary of war, but war is what we live for. They are afraid of death, but death is what we love.

  The guard stirred on the ground, waking.

  Then Waylon moved away from the window. And I leapt up. I grabbed hold of the sill. I lifted myself. I looked in.

  It was one of those weird double moments. I was in the past, but I was in the present too. I knew I was lying on the floor in the weird mansion screaming in agony. And I knew I was in the Homelander compound. I knew the guard was about to cry for help. I was about to be caught. But now—right now—there was this one moment—looking in the window . . .

  Look! I thought desperately. Look!

  I looked.

  There was Sherman. Prince. Waylon. The table. The laptop.

  The laptop.

  Look, Charlie! What’s on the laptop?

  “I see it!” I shouted. “I see it, I see it! ”

  Then, like an enormous, monstrous paw made of fire rising up from the bottom of the earth, breaking through the earth’s surface to grab me, pain—pain like nothing I had ever known before—wrapped itself around me, closed its flaming fingers tight.

  “No!” I shouted.

  I tried to fight it off, but it was no use. It was irresistible. It dragged me off the windowsill. It dragged me down and down, out of the compound, out of time, out of memory, down into an all-consuming agony like nothing else.

  I have to tell them! I thought. Don’t let me die. Please. Not yet. Mike. Rose. I have to tell them what I saw!

  It was the last sensible thought I had. After that, there was nothing—nothing at all—but falling and pain and blackness.

  PART IV

  CHAPTER TWENTY-SIX

  All There Is

  I saw a blue sky. The sun like a medallion. I felt myself floating upward into the light. For a weirdly peaceful moment, I actually thought I was dead and headed elsewhere.

  Then the world contracted in a spasm of pain. I flinched, my eyes shut, my teeth gritted. No, I wasn’t dead. This hurt too much to be anything but life!

  The gripping pain slowly passed. I opened my eyes.

  I was lying on a four-poster bed in a room of high windows. The bed curtains had been pulled aside. So had the window curtains. The skyscape through the pane filled my vision. Then I turned away, looked around me.

  I was in that bedroom again, the room where I’d talked to Beth. Heavy curtains, colorful rugs, knickknacks glittering everywhere, clocks ticking. Clocks . . . the light . . . It must be morning now . . . no, later. The sun was low but midway through its transit, as in a winter noon. I stared at a small domed clock sitting on one of the many end tables. After twelve . . .

  I sat up fast. Too fast. For a moment, I was almost overcome by dizziness and nausea. I fought it off and pushed the bedcovers aside. I stumbled to my feet.

  “It’s all right,” said a woman’s voice behind me.

  Startled, I turned. There was Dr. Farber, sitting in a chair in the corner. A giant portrait hung above her of some rich guy in a three-piece suit. Beneath the picture, she looked small and fragile. Her sharp, crowlike face was gray, her eyes sunken. She was exhausted.

  “You made it,” she said. “How do you feel?”

  “Fine, but where . . . ?” I began, but another wave of dizziness went over me, and I sat down hard on the edge of the bed.

  “They’re all downstairs,” Dr. Farber said quietly. “They’re getting ready.”

  “Ready?”

  “You slept the night and most of the morning, Charlie,” she said. “For a while there, I wasn’t sure you were going to come back at all.”

&nb
sp; I tried to take it in. “All night . . . the morning . . . It must be . . .”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve.”

  “New Year’s . . .”

  Urgency cleared my mind, washed my nausea and dizziness away in an instant. I was on my feet in a moment. I suddenly realized I was undressed, wearing nothing but underwear.

  Reading my mind, Dr. Farber pointed to a gilded chair against the wall. There were clothes folded on it. “Those are clean.”

  Jeans. A T-shirt. A sweatshirt. A baseball jacket. I pulled them on quickly.

  Then I looked at Dr. Farber. She continued to gaze at me, weary but glad—glad to see me alive, I think.

  “Do you remember what happened last night?” she asked me.

  I thought about it. I did remember. The injection. The renewed memories.

  I see it!

  “Did I do it?” I asked her. “Did I remember anything useful?”

  She nodded wearily. “You did it, Charlie. You remembered—and you told us about it.”

  I shook my head. The night before was a blur.

  “Rose and Mike,” said Dr. Farber. “They have it all. They know what they need to know.”

  “Where . . . ?” I began.

  “They’re in the kitchen,” Dr. Farber said.

  Like everything else in the mansion, the kitchen was huge. There was a high ceiling with all kinds of brass and iron pots and utensils hanging from it. There was an enormous black stove and a big butcher-block table with an elaborate mosaic surface.

  A TV was embedded among the tiles on one wall. It was playing the news. There were pictures of New York City. Enormous billboards. Video screens the size of houses. Lights flashing even in the daytime. I recognized the streets around Times Square.

  “People are already beginning to gather for the big celebration tonight . . . ,” the newswoman said over the pictures.

  Rose and Mike weren’t here, but Dodger Jim and Milton One sat at the table. They were eating rolls and eggs. Both had their eyes on the television when I walked in. Milton One was the first to turn to me. He lifted a roll.

  “Good,” he said, his voice friendly and calm as always. “You’re in time for breakfast.”

  “Where’s Mike?” I asked him.

  “Have some eggs too,” said Dodger Jim, scraping some onto a plate for me.

  “Where’s Rose?” I asked.

  “Eat, Charlie,” said Dodger Jim. “You’re going to need it, believe me.”

  “Organizers estimate there could be over three million people tonight in Times Square alone,” said the newswoman on the television.

  I stared at the set, the pictures of smiling, laughing people bundled up for winter on the streets of New York. Snatches of conversation from the night before flashed in my sleep-fogged brain.

  The whole point about Cylon Orange is its density. Six canisters is enough to wipe out four city blocks.

  Four city blocks in New York City on New Year’s Eve . . .

  Could be a million people there. A million, at least.

  I turned to Milton One, now calmly holding out a plate with eggs and bread on it.

  A million people, at least.

  “Where are they?” I said again. “Rose and Mike. Where are they?”

  “Mike is in the gym, studying maps,” said Milton One. “Same as he’s been doing most of the night. Rose is upstairs in the big room, calling everyone he knows, trying to convince them the threat is real. Same as he’s been doing all night.”

  “Patel’s outside getting the plane ready,” Dodger Jim added.

  “The plane . . . ?”

  “Eat, Charlie. I mean it,” said Milton One. “It’s going to be a long day. You won’t make it without food.”

  “It’s New Year’s Eve,” I said desperately. I pointed at the television. “They’re already gathering in Times Square. We have to do something.”

  “We will,” said Milton One in that same calm voice. “And the first thing we’re going to do is eat.”

  I was frustrated, but I saw the sense of it. I grabbed the plate. Grabbed some silverware off the butcher block. Quickly, I shoveled eggs into my mouth, swallowing them without tasting them.

  “Tell me what happened last night,” I said through a mouthful of food. “What did I see? What did I do?”

  “You screamed like a banshee for one thing,” said Dodger Jim. He smirked as he said it. I had given him a couple of knocks awhile back during a fight we had. He didn’t seem too sorry that I had been in pain.

  Milton One rolled his eyes. “The important thing you did is you remembered.”

  The images began to clear. It came back to me. I stopped eating. “The laptop. The laptop in the barracks.”

  “Prince was apparently showing his friends the route he would take to get to Times Square. You saw a map,” said Milton One. “A map of the New York City subway system with a route through the tunnels illuminated on it.”

  “The subways . . . ,” I murmured.

  “You were able to trace the route on a map Mike showed you.”

  “Yes . . . ,” I said. It came back to me. “That’s right.”

  “Security is extra tight,” said the newswoman on television, “but if people are afraid they’re not showing it. They’re coming to the Big Apple in droves . . .”

  On the screen, groups of people cheered and waved, celebrating the New Year.

  “Well, then, if we know where Prince is going . . . ,” I began to say.

  But now Rose walked in. I—and Jim and Milton— turned to look at him.

  He was wearing slacks and a wrinkled button-down shirt. He was carrying a battered leather briefcase in one hand. I would say he looked grim, but he always looked grim, his mouth tight, his intelligent eyes alert. He looked at our expectant expressions. We didn’t even have to ask the question out loud.

  “I’ve got some assurances from the NYPD that there’ll be a powerful police presence along the route we think Prince will take,” he told us with a sigh.

  Slowly, I laid my empty plate down on the butcher-block table. “A powerful police presence . . . ?” I asked. “What does that even mean?”

  “Probably?” said Rose. “It probably means it’ll be harder for us to get where we’re going.”

  “Where are we going?” I said.

  Before Rose could answer, I heard the Cessna engine start up outside. It roared and throbbed.

  The next moment, Mike walked into the kitchen.

  He nodded once at Rose. “I’ve got the layout down solid,” he said. “I know every inch of the way.”

  Rose nodded back. “Good.”

  The detective set the leather briefcase on the table. He opened it. Reached in. He brought out a deadly-looking pistol, a 9mm Glock. It was already stuck in a shoulder holster. He handed the gun and holster to Mike. Mike was wearing a dark tracksuit. He pulled the jacket off and slipped the holster on over his sweatshirt. As he did, Rose brought another pistol out of the briefcase. This one he handed to me.

  “Waterman gave you some weapons training, didn’t he?” he asked.

  “Some. The Homelanders gave me some too.”

  “Good. I don’t want you to blow your own head off.”

  “I’ll do my best.”

  I took off the baseball jacket and strapped the weapon on over my sweatshirt. It felt heavy and somehow dark beneath my arm.

  Now Patel appeared in the doorway. We could still hear the plane’s engine rumbling and pulsing outside.

  “We’re ready to go,” said Patel.

  I looked at them, all of them. Mike, Rose, Patel. Dodger Jim. Milton One. I looked from one face to another.

  “What are we going to do?” I asked them.

  For a moment, none of them answered. Then, finally, Mike said, “We’re going to stop them, Charlie.”

  I stared at him. “What do you mean?” I asked. “Just us?”

  Mike took a long breath. Then he nodded. “We’re all there is,” he said.

 
CHAPTER TWENTY-SEVEN

  Dead in the Air

  The Cessna flew low over green rolling hills. Then, after a while, Patel found the highway and we followed its winding white path. As the winter sun sank and the pale blue of the sky grew deeper, small cities appeared sparkling below us and then melded into thick forests or faded away into empty fields.

  Soon more highways seemed to join the one we were following, becoming a snaky tangle of pavement amid the surrounding foliage. More cities seemed to rise beneath us. In the intervals between them we saw broad highways flanked with gas stations and malls. The dusk gathered slowly and the world turned gray.

  I was sitting up front in the passenger seat again, Rose behind me, Patel next to me, Mike behind him. I peered through the side window at the changing light outside and the changing scene below.

  “There’s the river,” Patel said to me finally. His voice crackled over the headset and under the thrum of the engine. There were bursts of static and distant voices on the radio, but the volume was very low.

  I followed the gesture of his hand, looked ahead through the windshield and saw where the graying landscape reached what at first seemed like a sudden ending. Then the darker gray of the river became visible, a long, thick line. Another little while and I could make out the water, the low December sun behind us sending a fanning, sparkling line across it to the far side.

  “And look there,” said Patel, pointing to my side.

  I turned and looked. Far off against the deep blue distance, I could make out the Manhattan skyline, a jagged dance of stone. The lights were just beginning to come on in some of the windows.

  “Nice, huh,” said Patel kind of wistfully.

  “Awesome,” I said. It was. An awesome, amazing city.

  “I grew up there,” he went on. “In Brooklyn, over on the other side.”

  “No kidding.”

  “I miss it now, I’ll tell you.”

  “Sure,” I said. “Home, right?”

  “Exactly. Home.”

  “I miss mine too,” I said—and I felt it. As far away as I’d been, as much trouble as I’d seen, I’d never felt as far from being reunited with my family and friends as I felt just then. Just then, to be honest, it seemed impossible it would ever happen.