The last thing I remember h-1 Read online

  “There,” she said. She gave me my hand back. I gave her back her books. “Your tongue still superglued?” she asked me.

  I moved my tongue around in my mouth to check. “What do you know?” I said. “Stuff’s not as strong as they say.”

  “There’s no truth in advertising.” She shifted her books back under her arm. “Well, I’m really glad I stopped by.”

  “Me too.”

  “So I’ll see you, right?”

  “Right. Definitely. You’ll definitely see me.”

  That’s what I thought as I stood there watching her walk away. That I’d see her-definitely. I glanced down at the number written in marker on the back of my hand and I thought: I’ll call her and I’ll see her. Just like that. The way it felt… it almost didn’t seem real to me. It seemed like something I would daydream. It was something I would daydream-that I had daydreamed-only I wasn’t daydreaming now. It was all real.

  Then she went out the door, out of the cafeteria, and she was gone and I never saw her again-never again that I remember, anyway.

  Because when I woke up the next day, the daydream was over and I was right in the middle of my worst nightmare.

  CHAPTER TEN

  Leave Me Alone, Winston Churchill I lay dazed in the cab of the upside-down pickup truck. I was in the middle of the field, about two-thirds of the distance from the compound to the forest trailhead. The guards with their Kalashnikovs were running across the field toward me.

  But I wasn’t thinking about them. I was thinking about Beth. Her smile flashed through my mind again, that 9.5-on-the-Sweetness-Scale smile. I saw her as clearly as if she were right there in front of me. I saw her turn her eyes to me. And she spoke! Only it was the weirdest thing. I could see her face, I could see her lips moving. But the voice that came out was not her voice. It was a deep voice-a man’s voice-and it had a British accent.

  It said: Never give in.

  I groaned. I shook my head slowly back and forth: no, no, no. I thought: Leave me alone, Winston Churchill. I’m tired now. I can’t do anything more. Leave me alone. Let me talk to Beth.

  I tried to make him go away. I tried just to concentrate on Beth, just to see her there and hear her voice instead of his. But the harder I squinted, trying to hold on to the sight of her face, the more she seemed to fizzle and fade like the TV picture at my house when a strong wind blows tree branches in front of the satellite dish. The image of her became choppy and transparent, and I could look right through her and dimly make out the window of the overturned truck and the upside-down world beyond it and the upside-down meadow out there with its green grass and its white wildflowers-and the upside-down guards with their upside-down guns, running as fast as they could right toward me.

  Coming to get me. To drag me back to the compound. To kill me.

  Never give in.

  There he was again. Whispering insistently in my ear. Bugging me.

  Leave me alone, I told him again. I’m tired. The battle is over. I lost.

  Never, never, never, he answered.

  Was this guy the biggest pain in the neck ever or what? Always saying the same thing over and over and over like a broken record. I couldn’t imagine how he ever got elected prime minister of Great Britain. He didn’t understand. He didn’t grasp the complexities of the situation. He didn’t know-he couldn’t know-how much every bone in my body ached, how every muscle screamed with pain. He couldn’t know how tired I was- more tired than I’d ever been in my life-and how dazed and frightened I was after being tortured and shot at and banged around inside this stupid truck. All I wanted was to slip away inside myself and be with Beth again and see her smile and hear her voice.

  I tried to explain it to him. There’s nothing else I can do, Winston Churchill, I said. This is just the way it is now, okay? Sure, it’s kind of sad, them coming to kill me and me being only seventeen and everything. And I wish it weren’t happening. I really do. But I mean, it’s not my fault! I don’t even know how I got here. I don’t even know what’s going on. I tried my best to get away just like you told me, and I failed. That’s all. It didn’t work, okay?

  Never give in, said Winston Churchill in my ear. Never, never, never, never.

  I sighed wearily. All right, I thought. I’ll try. It’s not going to help, but I’ll try.

  Using all my strength, I forced my eyes open wide.

  Everything came clear in front of me. I could see that only a second had passed since the truck had rolled over. My memory of Beth-my conversation with Winston Churchill-all this had flashed by in only a moment. The guards were still just coming through the gate of the compound, just beginning to cross the meadow toward me. If I could get myself moving-if I could get myself out of this truck-there might be time-there might just be time for me to make a run for it into the forest and find a hiding place among the trees.

  That thought-that hope-sent new strength and energy coursing through me. It gave me strength. I started moving.

  The first thing I had to do was twist my body around so I could get out through the window. It wasn’t easy. As soon as I started to move, a shock wave of pain radiated through me. Every sinew in my body seemed to have been scorched raw. There seemed no place left inside that wasn’t in agony.

  Never… Winston Churchill started to say.

  Yeah, yeah, yeah! I said back to him. I’m moving, I’m moving.

  And I did move, a ragged cry squeezing out between my gritted teeth as the pain surged through me again.

  I twisted around in the upside-down cab and started squirming my way out the open window. I felt as if my muscles were on fire, but even though it made me cry out again, I kept going. I got my hand through the window- got it out onto the earth outside. I dug my fingers into the dirt and pulled myself farther.

  Grunting and coughing, I crawled halfway out of the truck. I turned onto my back. Drew up my legs. The rest of me came clear and I rolled over, tumbling away onto my face. As I did that, something fell off me. I heard it land with a soft thud on the grass and looked for it. It was the gun-the pistol the driver had tried to pull on me. I grabbed it. Quickly shoved it into my waistband. Then I was working my way off the ground, up onto my knees.

  I looked over the meadow toward the onrushing guards. They were still far away, still too far to get a good shot at me. All I had to do was stand. All I had to do was run. With a little luck, I might just make it into the darkness and protection of the forest.

  I was about to give it a try when an idea came to me. I paused, reached back into the truck. I grabbed the keys dangling from the ignition. This was the only vehicle I’d seen in the compound. If they couldn’t drive it, they would have to chase me on foot. I’d have a better chance.

  I pulled the keys out. I noticed the keychain was one of those black plastic things with the push-button flashlight in it. That might come in handy too. I shoved it into my pocket.

  Now it was time. I gritted my teeth again. I had grabbed hold of the side of the truck. I used it to pull myself to my feet, almost sobbing now from the pain. I glanced back at the guards. They had slowed down for a second. I think they were startled to see me moving. They actually stared at me and pointed.

  But not for long. Soon they were running toward me again. Now I could hear them shouting to one another, shouting at me: “Stop! Hold it right there!” They were getting close fast. They were leveling their weapons at me.

  There was no more time. I had to go. I had to run. No matter how much it hurt, I had to run as fast as I could for that tree line.

  Never give in.

  I let go of the truck and took off.

  It was a strange thing. I knew I’d been tortured, beaten, maybe burned. I knew I’d been roughed up fighting with the driver and knocked around inside the truck as it rolled. The pain all through my body was terrible, and I knew it should’ve been crippling. I shouldn’t have been able to do more than limp a few steps and then fall exhausted to the ground. And at first, it was bad. Worse than ba
d. It was awful. At first, it felt as if my limbs and my torso were encased in some kind of spiked suit, some kind of torture suit that held me back and stabbed into me every time I tried to move.

  Then, though-then-with every new step-the suit somehow seemed to get lighter. Somehow, the faster I went, the lighter it got, until bit by bit, step by step, I was flying over the grass, racing as fast as I could for the trees, and the pain was leaving me as if the torture suit were breaking up and falling off, the pieces of it flying away behind me.

  Never, never…

  All right, Winston Churchill, all right already, do I look like I’m giving in?

  I ran. I stuck to the dirt road and ran as hard as I could, racing toward the trailhead and the woods. The wall of trees rose up over me as I got closer. Huge maples and oaks and towering evergreens: the closer I got, the higher they seemed to rise, the more they seemed to block out the sky and the sun that was sinking behind them. Another step and the warm sun was gone, blocked out by the trees completely so that I was running in cool shadow.

  I glanced back over my shoulder. The guards were almost at the truck now. One of them had dropped to his knees. He steadied his AK and started shooting at me. The deadly sputter of the gun-that heart-stopping sound-reached me across the meadow and made my stomach turn over with fear. The guard was still too far away to get a clean shot, but that didn’t make me feel any better. He didn’t need a clean shot. He only needed a lucky one. Every moment, I kept waiting for the bullets to hit me and bring me down.

  The fear gave me another burst of energy. I stopped looking back and ran even faster. Now there was nothing in front of me but the trunks of the trees and the deep depth of tangled green darkness that was the forest interior.

  Then I felt an earthy cool, and the trees closed over me. The trail turned sharply and I tore along it. I looked back. The guards were lost to view-that meant they couldn’t see me either anymore, couldn’t get a shot at me at all.

  But I didn’t slow down for a second. I just kept running. Running on the trail fast as I could. Leaping over holes and roots and rocks. Running deeper and deeper into the welcoming shadows of the forest. Running through the pain. Running for my life.

  Never give in.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  The Woods I don’t know how long I ran like that. A long, long time, it seemed like. The woods got thicker and thicker around me, darker and darker as they shut out the sun. I strained my eyes, looking for a sign of civilization. A house, a cabin, a ranger station, anything. But as far as I could see, the woods went on forever, an endless, mysterious pattern of vines and branches, massive tree trunks and low shrub.

  For a while, I stuck to the trail. It was broad and flat- more like a fire road than a hiking trail-so I could move along it quickly. I figured that was the best way to put some distance between me and the guards. In here, see, in the forest, their weapons were useless at long range. There was no way they could even see me for any distance, let alone get a shot at me through the trees. So they’d have to catch up to me first. They might be able to do that if they could push a vehicle through here. But if I was right about that truck-if it was the only vehicle in the compound-or even if they had to go back to the compound to get another truck-then I had time to cover some territory before they could begin to close the gap.

  So I ran along the trail as fast as I could go, deeper and deeper into the woods. But it was tough going. I was already unsteady, battered, hurt. Soon enough, I began to feel my legs start to weaken and my lungs start to give out. Not to mention, I needed a drink of water-a lot. I didn’t know how long it’d been since I’d had a drink, but I was starting to feel the need in a big way-not just in my dusty mouth and my parched throat, but in the wooziness that was seeping into my brain like fog and the weakness that was spreading from the core of me out to my limbs.

  Finally, I was staggering. The trail was no good to me now. I couldn’t travel quickly anymore anyway. So I left it and plunged into the depths of the brush and trees. There was no running here, not for long. After just a few steps, the undergrowth got so thick that I had to tear it away with my hands to make any progress at all. On the plus side, the trail was soon invisible behind me, which made me suspect I was probably more or less invisible from the trail as well. Even if the guards caught up to me, they wouldn’t be able to see me. They might well miss me and run right past.

  But if the way had been hard before, it was even harder now. Pushing through the brush, tearing through the hanging vines. Now that I wasn’t running anymore, the pain-that spiky torture suit of pain-seemed to close over my body again. I ached and burned. Branches scratched my face and arms. Vines and tangled bushes wrapped themselves around my legs like hands trying to hold onto me. I yanked myself free of them. I shoved myself on. With every step, my thirst got worse. I got dizzier. The weakness at my center spread steadily into my legs and arms.

  Then, suddenly, I was down. I didn’t even remember falling. All at once, I was just lying on the forest floor with my face in the dirt and half my body caught in a tangle of thorny underbrush. I lay there, gasping, barely conscious at all. I tried to listen for voices, for footsteps, for gunfire-to hear if the guards were closing in on me. All I could hear, though, was the harsh, rasping sound of my own breathing and the hammering rhythm of the pulse in the side of my head.

  It was a long while before I stopped gasping and another long while before my breathing and heartbeat slowed. Then, as I lay there listening for any sound of the approaching guards, other noises came to me, the noises of the forest. They sort of rose up around me so that I knew they had been there all along and I was just becoming conscious of them. There was a steady flow of birdsong, birds calling to birds in the high trees. There was a steady trill of crickets and the rising, falling rattle of the cicadas. Bees hummed and twigs and dead leaves crackled as the lizards scrambled over them.

  I lay there and listened. They were good noises somehow. They were cheerful, peaceful. Exhausted as I was, thirsty beyond belief and scared beyond telling, the noises soothed me. They gave me a sort of lazy, dreamy sensation, and I started to think there might still be some hope-I might still get away from this insanity and back to the life I knew. Maybe someone would find me here, I thought sleepily. Or maybe I would somehow summon enough strength to get up and stumble on a few more steps and find a village or a highway or hikers-or better yet, hunters with guns who would protect me. Or maybe I would just fall asleep and wake up in my own bed, as I had fallen asleep in my bed and woken up in this insanity.

  I lay there lazily and listened to the forest noises- birdsong, crickets, bees. And without thinking much, I kind of gazed at my hand, the hand lying on the ground right in front of my eyes. That’s strange, I thought in a distant, dreamy sort of way. Where’s Beth’s number? Because this was the hand that Beth had written on with her marker yesterday. And though it was bruised and bloody and there was an ugly burn mark on it, I could still see: the number was gone. There wasn’t a trace of it. Which really was strange, wasn’t it? I remembered how, just before I went to sleep last night, the last thing I did before I turned off the light was to look at my hand and see the number was still there. It was strange-strange that there should be no sign of it now at all.

  I lay there gazing at my hand and thinking about that and listening to the forest. My mind drifted from thought to thought, and not all my thoughts made sense as my consciousness came and faded. I don’t know how much time passed like that, but the next thing I knew, amid all the birdsong and so on, I became aware of something else: a deep, loud, almost comical burp of a noise. A frog. A big one, by the sound of it. A big old bullfrog honking it up not very far away.

  The frog burped again, and it made me smile-it’s true-a hunted guy lying there with my face in the dirt and my arm tangled up in scratching branches, and I smiled at the noise the frog made… and then I stopped smiling, because an idea had come to me.

  I listened harder. Or that is, I shifted the way I
was listening. I started listening for noises of a different tone, a different kind. Now, instead of the birdsong and all the rest, I was listening to the sound of the air moving through the treetops. I was hearing the creak and pop of wood bending as the trees stirred this way and that. I heard the low rustle of silence, and finally-there!-there it was-almost buried in that range of sounds but just audible: I heard the trickling whisper of running water.

  The frog gave another great big burpy croak, and I not only smiled again, I almost laughed out loud. It was as if he were talking to me, calling to me through the forest, saying, “Here I am-burp-a frog-burp-and what do frogs like?-burrap!-pardon me; must’ve been something I ate-they like water!

  ”

  I’m not sure anything else could’ve gotten me moving again, not even Winston Churchill. But water-oh yeah, I’d move for that. I ran my tongue around my mouth, trying to dampen the terrible dryness there. I braced my hand against the dirt. I started to push myself up. The bushes-those thorns I was lying in-they seemed to grab hold of me, as if they were trying to keep me there, as if they were saying, Not so fast, Harley-Charlie. What’s your hurry, dude? Take it easy. You don’t need water! You just need to lie here and sleep, sleep, sleep!

  I gave a growl of resistance. I felt the branches dig into my flesh as I wrestled my arm free of them. Then I was up. On my knees; on my feet. I stood where I was, weak, hunched over, swaying slightly. Listening to the sound of water. Trying to figure out where it was coming from.

  The frog croaked again. That was no help. You can’t find a frog by the sound of it. Try it sometime. It always sounds like it’s coming from where it’s not. Every time you move toward it, it comes again from somewhere else.

  But the water-I could still hear that. I began to move toward it. Stumbling over the thick jumble of roots and bushes at my feet. Staggering from tree to tree. Leaning against the sturdy trunks to rest and catch my breath again.