The Final Hour h-4 Read online

  Two flagpoles stood against the paneled wall, an American flag and a state flag, one on either side of the window, on either side of Tanker as he leaned back and swiveled this way and that.

  He had me standing in front of the desk. There was a guard standing beside my left shoulder and another standing beside my right. Chuck Dunbar was standing in back of me. I guess you could say I was well guarded.

  For a long time, Warden Tanker just went on swiveling back and forth, back and forth, squinting narrowly up at me.

  Then after a while he asked, “And just how would you know there’s going to be a terrorist attack on New Year’s Eve?”

  My frustration felt like a creature trapped in my chest trying to get out, a great big gorilla or something pounding on the cage bars of my insides. I let out a slow breath, hoping to calm the gorilla down. It didn’t help much. “I was with them,” I said. “The terrorists. I overheard them talking.”

  Warden Tanker looked at the guard to the left of me. Then he looked at the guard to the right of me. Then he looked over my shoulder at Dunbar. “Uh-huh,” he said finally. He had a thin, high reedy voice that came out of him in a slow drawl. “So why did you wait until now to tell me?”

  I stammered stupidly as I tried to put the words together. Finally, I managed to say, “I didn’t remember.”

  Warden Tanker sort of rolled that around in his mouth for a moment, then drawled it slowly back at me: “You didn’t remember.”

  “That’s right!”

  “Just kind of slipped your mind, did it?”

  “Yes… No… I had amnesia.”

  “Amnesia.”

  “Well, not exactly amnesia. I took a drug…”

  “I’ll just bet you did.”

  “No, not that kind of drug. A special drug so I wouldn’t remember. So the terrorists couldn’t get any information out of me.”

  Once again, the gorilla of frustration threatened to tear me wide open, as the warden swiveled slowly, moving his eyes from one guard to another as if they were all sharing a private joke.

  “And you got this drug exactly where?” Tanker asked. “From the amnesia fairy, I’m guessing.”

  The guard at my left shoulder snorted.

  “Look,” I said, trying to control my temper. “I know this all sounds hard to believe.”

  “Oh, you know that, do you?” asked the warden.

  “Yes, but you have to believe it. You have to.”

  Slowly, thoughtfully, Warden Tanker stroked his silver mustache with his hand. The way he did it reminded me of Sensei Mike. Sensei Mike had a big black mustache, and he’d stroke it with his hand sometimes when he was trying to hide the fact that he was laughing. But then Sensei Mike was always laughing because he thought the world was kind of a funny place in a lot of ways. The warden, on the other hand, was laughing at me. “Supposing I do believe you,” he went on slowly, “what do you expect me to do about it?”

  The Frustration Creature was going so crazy inside me that for a minute I couldn’t answer-couldn’t answer without trying to throw this guy out the window. But finally, I managed to blurt out, “Tell somebody! Homeland Security. The FBI. Anybody! What’s wrong with you?”

  I felt a sharp blow to the back of my head. I stumbled forward a step. Dunbar had hit me.

  “Speak to the warden with respect,” he growled.

  “You see, son,” the warden said-and I so wanted to punch him. So. “My problem is: A lot of cons come in here with a lot of stories. Hoping to get some new privileges or just start some kind of trouble. You know how I can tell when they’re lying?”

  I couldn’t answer. I gestured helplessly.

  “I can tell they’re lying because their mouths are moving.” He waved me away like I was a bad smell. “You have something you want to communicate with the outside world, call your lawyer.”

  The guards on either side of me took hold of my arms, ready to drag me out of there.

  “I did call my lawyer,” I said as the Frustration Creature raged and hammered at the bars of his cage inside my chest. “His office is closed for the holidays. Even if they get back to me-and even if they believe me-it could be too late.”

  But the warden wasn’t listening. He had already opened a folder on his desk, was already turning to other business. “Well, then I guess you’re out of luck,” he drawled.

  I started to answer… but then I stopped. My mouth shut with an audible sound.

  Because there was no point. The guards were drawing me toward the door and I realized: There was no way I would ever make Warden Tanker believe me. To him, I was just another lying con like a million others he’d seen. And the truth-the really terrible truth was, the story was so incredible, I’m not sure I would have believed me if I were sitting in his place.

  “Come on,” said Dunbar with a jerk of his head.

  The guards pulled me toward the door. The warden went about his business. And as I stumbled out, it hit me full force: The Great Death was coming, coming soon, New Year’s Eve.

  And at that moment, suddenly-terribly-I knew what I had to do.

  CHAPTER ELEVEN

  One and a Half Steps

  I paced my cell. A step and a half in one direction, a step and a half back. Again and again. Again and again. All the while, the Frustration Creature inside me stamped and raged, a beast in a cage of his own. But I just went on pacing. Back and forth. Back and forth. A step and a half. Again and again.

  My thoughts were wild, out of control. It was like some kind of crazed conversation of gibbering voices all talking over one another and interrupting one another inside my brain. I was trying to think of some way out of this, a way other than the one that had come to me in the warden’s office. Some way I could get the word out to someone who counted, warn someone who might be able to stop Prince, to stop the Great Death.

  But who? It couldn’t just be anyone. It couldn’t just be a friend, or even one of my parents. How would that help? Who would they go to? Who would believe them? By the time they could reach anyone, convince anyone, it would be too late. There was so little time. No time really. No details the police could work on, no proof, no way to know what the attack would be or even where it was going to take place, unless…

  Unless somehow I remembered. If I had ever known the answer, if it was still somewhere inside my mind, it might come back to me in the next memory attack. Or the one after that. It might…

  But then what? Without Rose, without being able to contact Rose or anyone else who knew my mission, it still seemed impossible that I could catch up with Prince before he did whatever it was he was planning to do. There seemed no way. No way except…

  Out of all those voices gibbering and interrupting in my brain, one kept speaking out louder than the others, one thought kept coming back to me:

  If I were free…

  If I were free, I thought, I could do something. I could find my way back to the mansion maybe, that crazy gray mansion sitting on the hill, the house Prince had used for his headquarters. It wouldn’t be easy to find. I wasn’t sure where it was. But I knew the location was in my head somewhere and I felt certain that, if I were free, I would be able to retrace my steps and get there.

  If I were free…

  I remembered Rose had told me that the mansion was still under guard and that it contained computers and records that had helped him and his agents arrest the other Homelanders. Maybe those computers and records held the key to where the Great Death attack was going to take place. Even if they didn’t, if I could reach the mansion, I would also reach the guards around the mansion. I would be able to give them the word, warn them about the coming of the Great Death.

  If I were free…

  But there was no way to get free, no way to get out of this hell of a prison. Even if my lawyers did everything they said they would, even if everything worked out the way Rose hoped it might, there was no way I could get out of Abingdon in time.

  No way, that is, but one. One insane, dange
rous, and totally desperate way.

  I paced the cell. I paced the cell. One and a half steps back and forth. Again and again and again.

  If I were free… If only I were free…

  Then, finally, what I was waiting for: The door buzzed. Slid open. A guard shouted at our tier of cells:

  “Yard time!”

  CHAPTER TWELVE

  Blade

  I stepped out into the yard. The sky hung low, dark gray and heavy. It seemed to press down on me. The cold air felt full of a coming storm.

  I felt the danger on every side. Wherever I turned, someone was watching me, waiting for his chance.

  Out by the basketball court, it was the Islamist crew. They were gathered at the edge of the black asphalt. They were stealing glances at me with deep, angry eyes, then turning away to murmur to one another.

  Over by the Outbuilding, it was the guards. They were standing with Dunbar at the Outbuilding door. Dunbar lifted his chin in my direction, his face like stone. It was his way of saying: I’m waiting for you, punk. I’m waiting for my moment.

  Then there were the musclemen over by the weights, the guys with the swastika tattoos. Blade was at the center of them, lying on a bench pressing about a gazillion pounds of weights on a bar. One of his buds noticed me and said a word to him. Blade let the weights settle into the holder. Then he sat up on the bench and looked at me. Not an angry look, but not a friendly one either. Kind of suspicious, I guess you’d call it. Like he was trying to take my measure, trying to figure out exactly who I was and what I was up to.

  I started moving toward him.

  It felt like a long way across the yard. The whole time I was walking, I felt all those eyes on me. The guards’ eyes and the Islamists’ eyes and the Nazis’ eyes too. As I came near the weight area, Blade stood up from the bench. He made a sort of ironic gesture, a sort of “right-this-way” wave of his hand, letting me have a chance at that bar with its gazillion pounds of weights on either end.

  I figured this was some kind of challenge, some kind of way for me to prove myself to these thugs. So I didn’t hesitate. I lay down on the bench. I placed my hands on the bar. I took a breath and went for it. I strained as hard as I could, the breath coming between my tight lips in puffing grunts. I pushed and pushed against the bar, trying to lift it even an inch off its resting place.

  No way. I might as well have tried to shift the moon.

  I gave a gasp and my arms fell back.

  Blade bent down and leaned his scarred-up, goateed face in close to mine, giving me a full look at his dreamy and murderous eyes.

  “What’s the matter, brother? Ain’t you got what it takes?”

  I didn’t flinch. Still lying there, panting, on the bench, I looked straight up at him. “I want in,” I said.

  He blinked. He straightened. He looked down at me, surprised.

  I sat up, swinging my feet to the ground. “You said you could use me, right?”

  He took a long, slow look around the yard to make sure no one was listening. Then he murmured softly, “That’s right. If you got what it takes.”

  I stood. Instinctively, the other swastika boys circled around me, ready to attack if Blade gave the word.

  “I’ve got what it takes,” I said. “I want in. What do you say?”

  Blade studied me a long minute. I’ll tell you something: I’d already seen some truly evil humanoids in my life. Prince. Waylon. Orton. Not just guys who’d lost their way, you know, who’d made mistakes and did something wrong. I’m talking about the real evildoing deal, the ones who knew they had a choice and chose to do damage to the rest of the world, who chose to cause suffering and wreak havoc. It’s a special breed of truly wicked individual and I’d learned to know them when I saw them. And I knew Blade. Blade was right in there with the worst of them.

  When he smiled, I felt a finger of ice draw itself slowly up my spine.

  “Here’s the deal,” he said in that grating purr. “There’s a reason we came to you, a reason we want you in.”

  I nodded. “I figured it wasn’t my good looks. What is it?”

  Blade looked around again, and all the other thugs looked around too. There was no one near us, no one who could hear.

  Blade’s low, rumbling growl went on. “What I say next-there’s no going back, you feel me? Once I let you in, you’re in. You can’t un-know what you know.”

  I took a deep breath. If I could’ve thought of any other way to get out of here, to have some chance, some shot of finding out what the Great Death was, where it was going to take place, of stopping Prince before he could carry out his plan, believe me, I would’ve done it. But this was all I had.

  I nodded. “Keep talking.”

  “Understand me, kid,” Blade went on. “You play me for a fool, you play a double game with me, and you will die. Not maybe. Not probably. You will. No matter what happens to me. I got friends all over, friends everywhere. Once I tell you what we’re planning, we are blood brothers, my young disciple, and if you betray me, the gates of hell themselves will not keep me from having my revenge.”

  All the time he was spouting this stuff, his eyes were glazed and dreamy. It was as if he was imagining his revenge as he spoke about it, imagining how sweet it would be. An evil dude, I’m telling you.

  For my part, I knew I had to show Blade I wasn’t intimidated. I was way, way intimidated, believe me. I’d’ve been crazy not to be intimidated. The guy was a stone killer. But all the same, I knew I had to show him I was cool.

  So I put on my hardest voice. I said, “Yeah, yeah, yeah, Blade, I get it already. You’re a tough guy and if I mess with you I’m a dead man. So you gonna tell me what I have to do or not?”

  It sounded almost convincing, sort of. At least it made Blade smile: a big toothy grin. He looked around at his swastika pals. They toothy-grinned right back at him as if to give me their seal of approval. And it’s funny-if by “funny” you mean kind of miserable and strange: I have been tortured by terrorists; I’ve been shot at by the police; I’ve been taken away from my home, my family, my girl, just about everything I loved. But I don’t think I’d ever felt quite so desperately far away from everything good and bright in the world as I felt just at that moment surrounded by the smiling approval of this gang of racist madmen.

  “Okay,” said Blade. “Listen up. About two miles from here as the crow flies, there’s a mall-or part of a mall-a mall they were building. You know, it was supposed to be for the town, Abingdon, where the guards and their families live and so on. Only times got tough, right? The builders ran out of money. The thing was never finished. It’s just sitting out there off the main highway. All empty and abandoned. Except not.”

  I narrowed my eyes. I didn’t get it. “Not…?” I said.

  “Not really abandoned. Some of our friends have been working out there. Digging, if you see what I mean.”

  I started to see, but I shook my head anyway to make sure he’d explain it all.

  “See, the mall has a complete sewage system,” said Blade. “And that system links up to the sewage system of the town. And that town system links up to a treatment plant. And that treatment plant also serves this prison.”

  My lips parted. “You mean, there’s, like, a link between the prison sewers and the sewers that go out to this abandoned mall?”

  “That is what I mean. That’s exactly what I mean.” Blade’s dreaming eyes shifted back and forth as he went on. “Our friends have been working ’round the clock to link the systems underground. Then it’s an easy tunnel from the sewers right up into this yard right here.”

  “The yard? What good does that do?” I said. “We’re surrounded by guns. The minute they break through the ground, the guards’ll open fire.”

  Blade grinned his toothy grin again and his pals grinned their toothy grins. Blade shook his head. “As it happens, there’s exactly one place in this entire prison where a tunnel could break through without being noticed by anyone.”

  I th
ought about it for a minute, but I still didn’t get it.

  “The Outbuilding,” said Blade.

  As he said the word, my eyes darted to the cinder-block structure sitting squat in the corner of the yard. A cold wind blew over me. It almost felt like some kind of warning, some kind of omen. It made me shiver, standing there, surrounded by those grinning and evil men.

  “The Outbuilding,” I echoed softly.

  “It’s the Yard King’s castle, no? He’s in there alone most of the time. He likes it that way. No one sees what he does, no one hears what he says, no one knows what he’s up to. If our friends can tunnel up into the Outbuilding, it’s more than likely there’ll be nobody there but Dunbar.”

  I shrugged. “So what? Dunbar doesn’t need any help to set off an alarm. All he has to do is shout…”

  “But he’s not gonna shout,” purred Blade. “He’s not gonna do anything.”

  “Oh yeah? Why not?”

  Once again, the wind rose. Once again, Blade smiled around at his friends and they smiled back.

  “The thing about the Yard King,” Blade said, “is that he holds a grudge.”

  I gave a snorting, mirthless laugh. “Yeah, I noticed that.”

  “I’ll bet you have. See, once he takes a dislike to you, nothing on this earth will keep you safe until he feels sure he’s broken you or killed you. Until he knows you live in fear of him, until he sees you cringe and grovel every time he walks by, he will not let you be. That’s how he is when he gets his grudge on against someone.”

  “I know, I know.”

  “You do know. Because right now, my young disciple, Yard King Dunbar has his grudge on against you.”

  I nodded. “He does. That’s the truth. He’s promised he’ll get me back in that Outbuilding the first chance he gets.”

  “Well, we’re going to give him that chance,” Blade murmured. “December 30. Five days after Christmas.”

  “The thirtieth… You said ‘right after.’”

  “That is right after. That’s when the tunnel will be finished. That’s the earliest we can go.”