HL 04-The Final Hour

by Andrew Klavan

  I took a breath to steady myself. Edged away from the rail. Reached into my shoulder holster.

  I drew out the 9mm and pointed it into the dark.

  A glow was growing through the arcade. A train was coming out of one of the tunnels. In the light from the headlight, I could make out four figures moving on the far side of the arcade. I turned my gun in their direction.

  There was an explosion and a blast of flame beside me. Mike. Lying on the track, he’d spotted the four figures, too, and opened fire. I heard a scream from across the expanse. The light in the arcade grew brighter as the train neared. I could see there were only three figures now. They all opened fire at once, the rapid explosions of their guns visible through the shifting shadows thrown by the nearing headlight.

  “Move it, Charlie!” Mike shouted.

  He was on his feet, dodging over the tracks with his body bent low. I did what he did, hopping over the third rail, moving quickly toward the cover of one of the columns.

  I got behind the column just as another round of shots went off on the far side of the arcade. Tiles and stone flew off the column in a white blast as I ducked behind it. Then I peeked out again and fired into the dark. To be honest, I was too pumped full of adrenaline and fear to take careful aim. I just sort of fired blindly. I knew I hadn’t hit anyone.

  Mike fired, ducking from one column to another. The three gunmen fired back.

  Then the train shot out of the tunnel to my left—and it was heading right for me.

  I had only a second before it ran me down. I rushed to get out of the way—and as I did, I came out from behind the column, exposing myself to gunfire. Sure enough, the three gunmen spotted me and their guns cracked through the arcade. I thought I felt something whistle by my arm. Then the train went roaring by, towering over me, its windows flashing bright above me as they went past. The huge machine cut me off from the gunmen. I took advantage of that, running along beside it, changing location while I couldn’t be seen.

  Then the train raced out of the arcade and disappeared into another tunnel. I crouched and leveled my gun at the place where the gunmen had been. I hesitated. In the sudden dark, I couldn’t see much of anything. I expected them to start shooting again any second. But they didn’t.

  Then Mike was right beside me. “They’re on the move,” he said, breathless. “This way.”

  He raced off across the arcade. I raced after him, leaping the tracks. We reached the far side and there was the gunman Mike had shot. He lay on his side in a pool of blood, dead, his eyes open and staring into the underground darkness.

  I hesitated a second, staring at the fallen man’s face. I recognized him—remembered him from my days of training in the forest compound. He was one of the Homelanders, for sure.

  I stepped over the body and moved after Mike. I caught up with him in a long corridor, a broader tunnel this time in which four tracks ran side by side with columns between them. I peered ahead through the darkness, trying to make out the remaining Homelanders. I didn’t see them.

  But they were there all right. As we moved farther into the tunnel, there was another round of gunshots. There was a whine and spattering cracks as bullets smacked into the tunnel wall. The guns were off to our left now on another set of tracks. Mike and I stayed low, moving toward the columns. I positioned myself behind one. He got behind another.

  I leaned there, my heart beating hard. The situation felt surreal, like a nightmare. Above us in the city, millions of revelers were laughing through the chilly night, celebrating the New Year. Here, right below them, we were trading bullets with a bunch of terrorists moving toward their target over the train tracks. Some part of me thought I would soon wake up, find myself back in my cell in Abingdon, or, better yet, find myself at home, the entire experience of the Homelanders a dream.

  Another shot blew that idea away in a big hurry. The bullet smacked into the side of the column I was hiding behind and threw up another blast of chips and dust.

  I felt a wind wash over me again. Heard a rumble. Looked to my left and saw a train heading into our tunnel. It was traveling on one of the tracks between me and the Homelanders. I glanced at Mike, hiding behind the column next to me. His eyes were bright with the reflected headlight. He saw the train coming, too, about to cut us off from the gunmen on the other side of the tunnel.

  He rolled out from behind the column and fired in the direction of the Homelanders. Three gouts of flame answered back and the bullets zinged past us. Mike ducked back behind the column again and nodded at me, his face growing brighter as the headlight came near.

  “These guys were stationed to pin us down,” he called to me over the noise of the train. “Prince and the poison are moving to their target while we shoot it out. We gotta end this, Charlie. Now.”

  Just then the train fired into the tunnel, cutting us off from the Homelanders—and on the instant, without another word, Mike moved. He curled out from behind the column and started running across the tracks, heading straight for the train as it barreled past.

  I went after him. The earth shook under my feet as the huge beast of a machine stampeded through the tunnel, its glowing windows right above me, its flashing sides inches from me. Mike knelt down, his gun leveled. I knelt down too. I leveled my gun too. I didn’t know the plan, but I figured if I followed Mike I couldn’t go far wrong.

  Then the train flashed past and the Homelander gunmen were right across the tracks from us. Mike and I started firing at the same moment. A man screamed. An answering gun went off. I saw the flame pointed toward the ceiling. I saw the man’s silhouette as he reeled backward, hit.

  Then, to my absolute shock, Mike leapt forward, firing as he moved. He pumped bullets from his gun rapid-fire and the gunmen fired back. Then I heard the trigger click and I knew Mike’s 9mm was empty.

  But by then, Mike was right on top of the two remaining gunmen. One lowered a gun at him and Mike kicked it from his hand. The other shot at him—so close I didn’t see how he could miss. But Mike seemed unhurt. He grabbed the guy’s wrist and twisted it. I heard the bone snap where I was, heard the man let out a shriek of agony before his body crumpled to the tracks.

  I ran toward Mike. But before I was anywhere near, the first man—the last Homelander gunman in the tunnel—leapt on Mike and the two struggled together.

  I saw their shadows intermingle as the Homelander moved in for the kill. Then I saw their shadows fly apart as Mike knocked him back.

  Then Mike went at him in a flurry of sweeping strikes, his feet shooting out in a series of kicks so quick I could barely see them, his hands sweeping around to chop at the attacker even as the attacker was reeling back. Then Mike let out a loud “Kee-yai!” and his fist smashed into the gunman’s chin so hard, the guy actually flew up into the air like something in a movie, leaving his feet and landing on his backside before tipping over sideways onto the track, where he lay still.

  It was over so quickly that I was just reaching Mike as the last man fell.

  Then I was beside my old sensei in the tunnel. He stood there, breathing hard, looking around.

  He lifted his chin, pointing along the tracks.

  “That way,” he said. “I don’t think there’ll be many of them left. You’ll be all right.”

  I gave a breathless laugh. “Yeah, well, seeing as you just took out two guys with guns, I’d say we have them outnumbered.”

  There was a little quirk in Mike’s mustache: a barely visible smile. “Good thing I taught you so well, I guess.”

  “What do you mean?”

  “Looks like you’re gonna be on your own from here.”

  I started to smile. I figured it was some kind of joke. Then I caught the look in Mike’s eyes and I realized: He wasn’t joking at all. I stood there, staring stupidly. Finally, I got it. My eyes went down to where Mike’s hand was pressed against his side. His fingers were already dark. With grime, I thought, and then I realized—no. There was blood pumping out of his side, pouring over
his hand.

  “Mike—Mike, you’re hit,” I said.

  “No kidding. Pretty sharp observation for a chuckle-head, chucklehead.” He gave a grunt of pain and staggered where he stood. He reached out and took hold of my shoulder. I grabbed on to his arm, trying to hold him up. But before I could get a good grip, he sank down to his knees, too heavy for me to hold.

  I went down on my knees beside him. “It’s all right, Mike. I got you. I’ll bring you topside; we’ll find an ambulance.”

  He shook his head. “No way. No time. Gotta keep going. Gotta stop Prince.”

  “That’s crazy, Mike.” I took hold of him under the arm. I tried to lift him to his feet. He wouldn’t let me. “Mike, you’re hurt,” I said. “You need help. You’re hurt bad.”

  He grabbed the front of my jacket, yanked my face so close to his I could feel his breath on me. “You think I don’t know how bad I’m hurt?”

  “Let me go. I’ll get help.”

  “No, you won’t. You’ll go after Prince. You’ll stop him before he sets off that gas, before he kills a million people.”

  “I’m not gonna just leave you down here.”

  “Wrong again, pal. Yes, you are.”

  “Mike . . .”

  He shook me—weakly, though—I could feel the strength going out of him. “Listen to me. You said . . . You told me . . . You said you would do what you had to do.”

  “That’s not what I meant . . .”

  “What did you mean? You meant you’d do what you had to do if it was fun, if it was nice, if you approved?”

  “No, I . . .”

  “If it meant killing a bad guy or winning a fight?”

  “I just meant . . .”

  “This is what you have to do, Charlie. You have to leave me here. You have to let me try to save myself while you go after them and try to save everybody else. This is what you have to do.”

  I opened my mouth. I tried to talk, but I felt like there was a sneaker stuck in my throat. I swallowed it down. “I can’t, Mike,” I managed to say finally. “I can’t just leave you.”

  “Don’t you tell me that.” Mike’s hand sank down. He slumped weakly where he sat. I looked down at his side. The blood was still burbling out of the bullet wound there. “Don’t tell me you can’t,” he murmured. “I taught you. I trained you, Charlie. If you can’t do what you have to do, I’m a failure. I’m dying for nothing here.”

  “What do you mean, dying? You can’t die.”

  He tried to laugh, but he didn’t have the strength. “Everybody dies, chucklehead. It’s the first rule of the game. Now listen to me: I’m gonna be all right.”

  “Mike . . .”

  “I mean it. You and me, chucklehead, we never talk about the faith stuff much. The way I see it, there’s not much to say. But you know where I stand. I did my best to live true, and whatever happens next, I’m gonna be fine. All right? So what I need, the thing I really need, is for you to go hunt those terrorists down and stop them from killing a lot of innocent . . .” He didn’t finish the sentence. The pain hit him and he cried out. I felt my whole body go rigid as if the pain were my pain instead of his.

  When he could talk again, Mike said weakly: “There’s no more time to talk about this. You told me you’d do what you had to do, Charlie. Now do it.”

  I had to bite my lip to keep from crying. I wanted to answer him, to protest, to say something, but there was nothing for me to say. I knew he was right. I knew there was no time to both help Mike and stop Prince from doing what he was going to do. We were down below the city and no one knew we were here. If this job was going to get finished, I was the one who was going to have to finish it. Alone.

  I stood up. I looked down at where Mike sat on the ground, resting on one hand. He was between two tracks so at least the trains couldn’t get him. The three gunmen he’d taken out lay splayed all around him. Two lay very still. One, unconscious, groaned a little and stirred. But his arm was twisted in a weird position, and I knew he wasn’t going to come around anytime soon.

  “Don’t worry,” said Mike. “I still have my weapon.” He tried to lift the gun to show me, but his hand sank back down to the ground. “I got a spare mag too. I can take care of myself.”

  “Right,” I managed to answer back, pretending I believed it.

  A train rumbled toward us out of the distance one track over. Rats scrambled past us. One of them crawled right over Mike’s extended leg. He didn’t even have the strength to kick it off. Instead, he busied himself with one of the bodies of the Homelanders. He stripped off the guy’s windbreaker. He bunched it up and pressed it to his side, trying to stanch the flow of blood.

  “What are you waiting for?” he said to me. He had to raise his voice to be heard over the growing rumble of the approaching train.

  “I don’t . . . ,” I started to say. But the train was too loud now. I knew he wouldn’t hear me. I wanted to tell him, I don’t know what to do.

  The train roared by, the light from its windows flashing over us. It gave me a good look at Mike’s pain-racked face. Then it was gone, the rattle of it fading.

  “You’ll figure it out,” Mike said, as if he had read my mind. “You’re not alone, Charlie. You’re never alone.”

  I nodded. “I’ll be back,” I said. “I’ll be back for you. I swear it.”

  Mike smiled, a real smile so I could see his teeth beneath his ’stache. “I’ll be here, chucklehead. You can count on it. Now go.”

  I wanted to say something else, anything else, anything to hold off the moment when I had to leave him. But how could I ever say what had to be said? How could I thank him? For teaching me. For believing in me. For leading me. Even for this—maybe especially for this. How could I ever thank him for forcing me to go on alone?

  “I’ll see you, Mike,” I said finally.

  “Yes, you will. Godspeed, chucklehead.”

  I nodded.

  Then I left him there.

  CHAPTER THIRTY-FOUR

  Alone

  I had never felt so hopeless, so afraid. I’d been tortured, shot at, beaten, locked up. I’d been running for my life so long I’d almost forgotten what it was like to live without being hunted. But all that time, there’d been something in me, something that lifted me over fear, that never let me sink to the final level of despair. The bad guys were after me, okay, but at least I knew where I was going. I just had to get away, stay alive, prove my innocence, take the next step and the next until I found my way home.

  But this wasn’t like that. It wasn’t about me. It wasn’t even about Mike, though I could barely stand to think of him alone and bleeding back there in the dark behind me.

  This was about all those people up above me, up there in the city, thousands and thousands and thousands of ordinary people, coming together to celebrate the New Year. And all of them in danger, their lives under threat. All their lives depending on me—me alone—and what I did next.

  See, all this while, all night long, I’d just been following Mike. Well, sure I was. Mike was my teacher, my sensei. He always knew what to do, where to go. He could handle anything. I was glad to follow him. I’d been his student since I was a little kid.

  But now . . . now he was gone. Now it was just me down here—just me standing between a million people and total, absolute catastrophe. What if I couldn’t stop it? You know? What if I couldn’t even find Prince? I mean, I hadn’t studied the maps like Mike had. What if I took a wrong turn and just got myself lost in the tunnels and wandered around like an idiot while Prince let his poisoned gas loose into the city? I could already see the headlines in my mind:

  Guy Acts Stupid While Millions Die.

  The rest of my life—that would be all I would think about. How I couldn’t make it without Mike to lead me. How I failed everyone at the most evil hour of the most desperate day.

  I hurried through the tunnel, through the shadows, the fear of failure like a sickness in me, making my breath short, my stomach weak. I c
ould feel the sweat pouring off me. I could feel the dampness of my hand against the handle of the gun. It wasn’t just the running and the fighting that made me sweat. This was a cold sweat, an anxiety sweat. It was the sweat of fear.

  I came out of the tunnel into another great arcade, a vast expanse of emptiness and columns and shadows. There were tunnels all around me, tracks disappearing into deeper darkness.

  I stopped at the edge of the place. I looked from one exit to another. I felt the hopelessness like a bottomless pit inside me, the fear like a hand tightening on my throat.

  Where was I supposed to go now? Which tunnel? Which way?

  “You’re not alone, Charlie,” I whispered to myself—as if I were Mike, as if I were Mike talking to me. “You’re never alone.”

  I felt my heart reach out desperately into the darkness.

  Help me, I thought.

  Almost as if in answer to my prayer, a train shot out of one of the tunnels, the light glaring in my eyes as it headed my way. I quickly moved to the right, off the tracks, and edged away farther into the arcade. The train barreled by to my left and then disappeared into the tunnel behind me.

  It vanished into darkness. And it turned out my prayer had not been answered at all. There I was, just as before, and I had no more clue which way to go now than I had when the train appeared. My lips were still dry with fear. My stomach was still empty with hopelessness.

  Then I saw the way.

  It was because I’d moved. I’d shifted position to get out of the path of the train. Now I was looking directly down one of the tunnels that exited the arcade. As I stood trying to figure out my next move, something blinked down there. A light. More than one light. Several lights with different colors, blinking and shifting in the shadows again and again.

  Instinctively, I started moving toward that light. After only a few steps, I understood what it was.