The Truth of the Matter Read online

  But that’s all I felt. No dampness. No blood. Plus I was alive. Which meant I hadn’t been shot with a bullet. A bullet to that spot would’ve almost surely hit my heart, almost surely killed me, with plenty of blood to go around. Flinching at the pain in my head again, I realized: it wasn’t a bullet. It was a dart, a drug of some kind. The man in the Dodgers cap had fired a tranquilizer weapon at me. I’d been knocked out, but I was unhurt. I was alive.

  Okay. So that was my situation. On the plus side, I was alive. That definitely had to be counted as a positive. In terms of negatives: well, the whole locked-in-the-trunk-of-the-car thing. It was hard to find anything good to say about that.

  In fact, as I thought about it, I felt the panic and claustrophobia start to rise up in me again.

  Again, I forced myself to breathe deeply. Never give in, I told myself. Never, never, never, never.

  Feeling stiff and uncomfortable, I shifted in the small space. I discovered I had a little room to move. My eyes were adjusting to the darkness now too. I could see that I was facing the rear of the car. I struggled to turn around, to face the front, to see what else I could see. Moving like that redoubled my sense of claustrophobia. Made me feel like I was in a coffin, buried underground, left for dead. Not a pleasant feeling.

  All the same, I did manage to make the turn onto my back then onto my other side. When I finished, I could see the barrier between the trunk and the backseat. That gave me an idea. I struggled to get closer to the barrier. I managed to press my ear against it. I listened.

  Sure enough, I could hear what was going on inside the car. I could hear voices in there. At first, it was hard to make out the words through the barrier. The rumble of the car’s motion kept drowning them out too. But if I lay very still and kept my breathing shallow, I could hear some of what was being said.

  “We don’t have much choice. One way or another, we’ve got to act.”

  That last part came to me clearly. I was pretty sure it was Waterman speaking. I recognized the distinctive southern twang I’d heard in the alley.

  Somebody answered him, but the voice was muffled.

  Then Waterman said, “No. And it isn’t going to be pretty finding out. But I don’t see what other options we have. They’re close. Very close. We can’t just wait and hope for the best.”

  This time, the answering voice was clearer: “He may still be worth something to us as he is.” I guessed it was the guy in the Dodgers cap speaking.

  “It’s gone too far for that, Jim,” said Waterman. “As he is, he can only be a liability.”

  Again, there was an answer I couldn’t hear.

  I licked my dry lips, staring into the darkness of the car’s trunk. Were they talking about me? Were they deciding what to do with me? I thought they probably were.

  Then I heard Waterman say flatly, “Well, then we’ve got to get rid of him.”

  There was another jolt, another flash of pain through my skull.

  We’ve got to get rid of him.

  That didn’t sound good at all.

  Now I could feel the car changing direction, slowing. We were getting off the highway. I figured we must be approaching our destination. Was this the place where they were going to get rid of me?

  “I don’t know,” the second speaker—Jim—began. “Either way, I think we have some kind of responsibility—”

  “No,” said Waterman, cutting him off. “This was part of the deal. We knew it would be like this from the beginning.”

  After that, the voices stopped for a while. I shifted in the car again. I felt around me, trying to find some way to get the trunk open or maybe some weapon I might be able to use: a tire iron maybe. But there was nothing. The trunk’s latch was hidden inside the body of the car. And the only objects around me were those insulated wires, which I now realized were a pair of jumper cables. Not much help.

  I’d have to wait and take my chances. They might just open up the trunk and shoot me, but they might take me out first, take me somewhere secluded. Sensei Mike had trained me well in karate. I was a good fighter, a black belt. There might be a chance, a small chance, I could break away from these guys and run for it.

  So I said a prayer for calm and for courage and I waited and, while I waited, I tried to think.

  Who were they? Who was Waterman? Was he one of the Homelanders? I had no way of knowing. That time I’d been arrested, someone had whispered in my ear that I should “find Waterman,” but I didn’t know who the whisperer was—a friend or an enemy? If all Waterman wanted was to “get rid” of me, why hadn’t he just done it in the alley? Why hadn’t he just shot me for real and left me there?

  Maybe they need something, I thought. Maybe they think I have some important piece of information.

  It isn’t going to be pretty finding out.

  That didn’t sound so good either. Were they going to torture me? Did my life depend on the answers I gave them? Didn’t they understand? I didn’t know what had happened. I didn’t remember.

  The car went on and on. I felt another turn. The road grew bumpier. I was jostled back and forth roughly in the trunk. It felt like we were on a dirt road. We were heading away from traffic, away from people.

  Now I heard the voices in the car start up again. They were easier to hear than before because the car had slowed down to deal with the rough road.

  “Where do you want to do this?” said the voice I now knew as Jim.

  “Might as well use the Panic Room. That way, we can be sure no one hears the screaming.”

  Great. Screaming. Screaming was never a positive. And Waterman’s tone when he talked about it was chillingly cool and casual. As if torturing me and getting rid of me was just another piece of business that had to be taken care of.

  There was a brief silence, then the guy called Jim said, “Poor kid.”

  “Like I said,” Waterman drawled, “this was the deal from the beginning.”

  “Yeah. Still. Poor kid.”

  My stomach turned. I was scared, I don’t mind saying. I’d escaped from the Homelanders. I’d escaped from the police. But something about these guys was different. They sounded so relaxed, so professional. Their tone sapped my confidence, made me feel there was no chance I could fight my way out of this.

  The car slowed. I felt a slight bump as if the car were lifting over a threshold. The car stopped. The engine died.

  I heard the doors opening. I held my breath. I heard footsteps.

  Then suddenly, Waterman’s voice sounded right nearby, right outside the trunk.

  “Let’s get this over with,” he said.

  The trunk came open.

  CHAPTER THREE

  Milton Two

  After such a long time in the darkness, I had to blink and squint in the pale light of evening before I could see anything. Then I saw Waterman, silhouetted by the light, standing above me holding the lid of the car trunk. Jim— the man in the Dodgers cap—was standing just behind him, his hands shoved into his overcoat pockets.

  “Come on, Charlie,” Waterman said grimly. “Let’s go.”

  He stepped back. I climbed slowly out of the trunk, my limbs stiff and aching after the long confinement.

  “Where are we?” I said. “Where are you taking me?”

  “Sorry,” said Waterman. “You don’t get any questions. We ask; you answer. That’s how it’s going to work.”

  I stood up, rubbing my legs to bring them back to life. I looked around, blinking, dazed.

  We were in an old barn of dried-out brown wood. The fading daylight poured through the open bay doors. Strips of light came in between the cracks in the ancient wallboards. Farm tools hung on nails in the boards: a pitchfork, a shovel, a pair of gardening shears. My eyes went over them as I tried to think of some way to get my hands on something I could use as a weapon.

  Waterman seemed to read my mind. “Don’t even think about it, son. I know you’re a tough guy. But you’re not tough enough. This is already going to be unpleasant. Do
n’t make it any harder on yourself than it has to be.”

  I eyed my two captors. Waterman looked like he was fifty or so. Dodger Jim looked somewhat younger, not much. But both of them looked like they were hard characters, very confident and experienced. It was a pretty good bet that Dodger Jim was holding a gun in his overcoat pocket too, and it might not be a tranquilizer gun this time. If I was going to try to escape, this wasn’t the time. I was going to have to take them when they were off guard in order to have even half a chance.

  Waterman glanced over his shoulder, as if he was afraid someone might be watching us. Outside the barn door I couldn’t see anything but forest.

  “All right,” he said. He slammed the trunk. “We can’t just stand around here. Let’s get moving.”

  Dodger Jim stepped aside and gave an ironic wave of his hand toward the barn door: right this way, sir. I stepped out into a deep forest that was fading into shadow with the coming of night. It was cold here, colder than in the city, colder with every moment the light grew dimmer. My breath frosted in front of me, and I could feel the chill eating at my skin through my fleece.

  Waterman closed the barn door and then he and Dodger Jim came up, one on either side of me. There was a trail going off in three directions. We took the path to the right.

  Sometimes we walked together. More often, the trail was too narrow and Waterman led the way with me in the middle and Dodger Jim behind me. No chance to make a break.

  At first, I kept my mouth shut. I knew Waterman didn’t want me asking questions. But then I thought: What do I care what he wants? I needed to distract these guys so I could get my chance to strike.

  So I asked: “Hey, who are you people anyway?”

  Waterman said nothing.

  I tried again. “I mean, are you the good guys or the bad guys?”

  Waterman snorted. “Doesn’t that depend whose side you’re on?”

  The answer chilled me. I’d heard too much of that kind of talk lately. Nothing is really good or bad, it’s all a matter of perspective, it’s all a matter of which culture you come from, a matter of what you’ve been taught and what you happen to believe. It sounded like Mr. Sherman, a history teacher of mine who’d turned out to be one of the Homelanders. It was just the sort of thing he used to say.

  I’d had a chance to think about it a lot over the last week or so as I was making my way to New York to find Waterman. I’d had to think about it. When everyone is against you—not just the terrorists but the police too— you have to wonder: Did I do something wrong? Am I the bad guy? Should I turn myself in and take the punishment society says I deserve? It’s not like a math quiz or a spelling bee. The answers aren’t as black-and-white as that. But that doesn’t mean there are no answers—and, in my situation, you have to get them right or it could mean disaster. It could mean you die.

  “No,” I said. “I don’t think good and bad does depend on whose side you’re on. I don’t think anyone really believes that either. I think they just say it because they think it makes them sound open-minded and sophisticated or something.”

  “Oh yeah?” Waterman glanced back at me with an ironic smile on his face. “You think there’s just good and bad and that’s it, huh?”

  “Pretty much,” I said. “I mean, maybe we don’t always know what it is. Maybe we goof up as we’re trying to find it. But that doesn’t mean it’s not there. That doesn’t mean you can’t get closer to it if you keep trying.”

  Waterman faced forward again, making his way along the narrow dirt path. “Some people would say that’s a pretty simplistic idea of the world.”

  This was good. I had his attention now. If I could keep him talking, I might find the opportunity to make my move.

  “A rock is harder than a feather,” I said. “You can talk and jabber and make exceptions, but in the end, if you have to choose which one is gonna hit you in the head, you’ll choose the feather every single time.”

  Up ahead of me, Waterman made a dismissive riffling noise. “What are you talking about? So a rock is harder than a feather. So what? What’s that supposed to mean?”

  “It means that simple and simplistic aren’t the same thing. Some things are true whether they’re simple or not. Sometimes people just get complicated so they don’t have to stand up for what’s simple and true. It’s easier. It’s safer. But that doesn’t make it right.”

  I glanced behind me. Dodger Jim was there at my back, his hands jammed into his overcoat pockets. His eyes were turning this way and that, scanning the woods, as if he expected someone to leap out at us at any moment. He wasn’t listening to our conversation. That was good too. He had the gun. He was the first one I was going to take down.

  Waterman didn’t look back as he spoke now. “Well, congratulations, Charlie. You know a rock is harder than a feather. I’m happy for you. What else do you know?”

  “I know freedom is better than slavery,” I said.

  “Oh yeah?”

  “Yeah.”

  “How do you know that?”

  “Because I know love is better than hate—and you can’t love something by force. You can’t be forced to love your neighbor or your country or God or anything. No one has the right to force you and they couldn’t if they wanted to. You have to be free, so you can choose, even if that means some people choose wrong.”

  “Wow. You sure know a lot.”

  “I know a rock is harder than a feather and I know freedom is better than slavery. That’s what I know. And that means the people working for freedom are the good guys. So which are you, Mr. Waterman? The good guys or the bad guys?”

  Once again, Waterman didn’t even bother to turn around. “Well, I still say things are a lot more complicated than—”

  That’s what he was starting to say when I struck.

  I turned fast, snapping the back of my fist at Dodger Jim’s head. I gauged the blow perfectly. My knuckles smashed into his temple. His Dodgers cap flew off. His mouth fell open. His eyes seemed to roll in his head. For an instant, he was stunned.

  I used that instant. I seized his right arm and yanked it out of his pocket. Sure enough, he had the gun clutched in his hand even now. I twisted his wrist with one hand and yanked the weapon from his loose fingers with the other.

  It all took no more than a second or two, but by then, Waterman was on the move. He’d sensed the action behind him, heard the blow, and turned to come after me. He only got a single step. Then I leveled the gun at his chest.

  “Hold it right—!” I started to say.

  There was a sizzling white flash. A searing pain shot from my wrist up through my arm. I cried out. My arm spasmed, out of my control. The muscles went dead and the gun flew from my limp fingers, twirling blackly through the evening air. The burning blow knocked me off my feet. The next thing I knew I was lying on my back in the dirt, staring upward, dumb and dazed.

  Something was hovering over me in the twilight, something just hanging there in midair, staring down at me. At first, in my stupefied state, I thought it must be some kind of magical bird or something. What else could just hover in the air like that? But as my head cleared, I saw it was a machine of some sort. It was about the size and shape of an Xbox controller. It was camouflaged like an army uniform. It had a red light burning on it. There seemed to be a round lens in the center of it: that staring eye.

  I started to get up, shifting to the side. As I did, the flying thing also darted to the side, following my movements.

  “I wouldn’t do anything too sudden if I were you,” Waterman drawled above me. “That thing can do a lot of damage.”

  I believed him. I moved more slowly, rubbing the raw, red spot on my wrist where the thing had blasted me. The muscles of my arm were starting to come back to life with a dull throb of pain.

  “What is it?” I said thickly, gesturing with my head toward the hovering machine.

  “That,” Waterman told me, “is Milton Two. He’s our security drone. He let you off easy. He can dial tha
t electronic pulse up high enough to knock you straight into eternity. Releases tear gas too when it has a mind. Pretty cool, huh?”

  “Yeah,” I said sourly. “Great.”

  The thing buzzed and hovered and shifted, following my every move as I started to climb to my feet. But I didn’t get far. Just as I propped my hand against the gritty earth to push myself up, another blow struck me. This one hit me in the side, right near the floating rib. It knocked the wind right out of me. Groaning, I fell, face-first, back to the dirt.

  For a moment I thought I’d drawn Milton Two’s fire again. But no, it wasn’t the drone this time. It was Dodger Jim. He’d kicked me.

  “That’s for the hit in the head,” he said, towering above me where I lay. Then he grabbed me by the collar and hauled me roughly to my feet.

  He had his cap back on. He had his gun back too. He jammed it hard against the side of my head. With his free hand, he rubbed the spot on his temple where I’d clocked him.

  “Try that again,” he said nastily. “See what happens.”

  “All right, Jim,” said Waterman. “That’s enough. You can’t blame the kid for trying.” He was looking around the woods nervously. “Let’s get out of the open already.”

  Dodger Jim gave me an angry shove down the trail. I looked at him. I looked at Milton Two, zipping around me in the twilight. I didn’t have much choice. I started walking.

  Waterman and Dodger Jim both fell in line behind me. The small drone flew along at my side, watching me the whole time, ready to blast me if I tried another move.

  None of them was taking any chances now.

  Wherever we were going, whatever was going to happen, whatever they were going to do to me, there was no escape.

  CHAPTER FOUR

  The Bunker

  We walked on down the trail. The cold grew sharper as the light continued to bleed out of the gray sky. The branches of the trees became gnarling black shapes around us. The forest began to disappear into the night.