The Final Hour h-4 Page 9

  “Just call me Santa Claus,” he whispered.

  Then he bowed his head and closed his eyes and pretended that he was praying too. And I bowed my head and closed my eyes. Only I wasn’t pretending.

  “And the shepherds returned,” read Chaplain Adams mournfully, “glorifying and praising God for all the things that they had heard and seen, as it was told unto them.”

  CHAPTER FIFTEEN

  Dunbar Again

  “Yard time!”

  There was a flurry of snow falling as I stepped out into the yard. The sky was dark gray again and hung low over the heads of the gray prisoners moving over the grass and asphalt. The watchtowers seemed almost black against the sky. The riflemen inside were just slowly pacing silhouettes.

  I felt the plastic knife against the flesh of my wrist. It was pushed up my sleeve and secured there tightly by a couple of loops of cloth I’d attached the night before.

  As I moved through the cold air to the weight area where Blade and his fellow thugs were working out, I glanced over in the direction of the Outbuilding. There was Dunbar, surrounded by his guards, watching me pass.

  I reached Blade. Blade smiled. His eyes were far away. He seemed lost in his dreams, whatever sick and murderous dreams they were.

  “All right,” I said. “When do you want to-”

  Blade punched me.

  It was a short, sharp shot that took me totally by surprise. It wasn’t faked. It wasn’t pulled. It connected with my jaw full strength.

  Before I even felt the pain of it, I was sprawled on my back with dust flying up around me. Sparks seemed to be dancing in front of my eyes.

  Through the dust and the sparks, I saw Blade coming at me.

  Before I could clear my head, he kicked me in the ribs. Hard. There was nothing fake about that either. Blade was having too much fun to hold back. He cocked his foot to kick again.

  I swiveled on my backside, fast. Swung my legs around and kicked his standing leg out from under him.

  Blade went down. I leapt on top of him, driving my fist hard into his face as I did. Instantly, the other cons were circling us, cheering. Blade and I rolled over and over in the dust, clawing at each other’s eyes, pounding at each other’s ribs. He wasn’t pretending so I didn’t pretend either: I had to defend myself or, escape plan or not, I think he would’ve just knocked me flat out for the fun of it. Fortunately, locked together like that, neither of us could put much force into our blows. There was a lot of action, but not much damage being done.

  What did hurt was the walkie-talkie the guard hit me with.

  He used the heavy butt of the thing and drove it down into the back of my head as Blade and I rolled over in the dirt. Instantly, the pain shot through my entire body. My thoughts went foggy. My limbs went weak.

  Guards grabbed me by the arms. They hauled Blade off me. Blade sent a final kick into my ribs for good measure as they dragged me away.

  Now there were three guards holding me, one guard gripping either arm and a third one grabbing me by the collar. They frog-marched me across the yard, my chin on my chest, my head lolling back and forth. As my mind began to clear, I lifted my eyes and saw the Outbuilding coming toward me, getting larger and larger. Larger and larger, too, was the grinning, eager fist-face of Dunbar. His eyes were alight with the anticipation of beating up on me again. I knew if he had his way, the beating was going to be much, much worse this time.

  The guards manhandled me into the Outbuilding, tossing me through the door so that I stumbled across the room. I hit the far wall and sank to my knees.

  I was now in a dark bunker of a place, an open space with its gray cinder-block walls lit by dangling bulbs. There was a small office in one corner, created with metal dividers. There were crates of I-don’t-know-what stacked here and there. This was where the Yard King did whatever it was he did when no one was looking.

  The guards followed me to where I lay on the hard-packed dirt floor. One of them kicked me in the stomach so that I curled up, clutching myself. Another kicked me in the back so that I straightened, letting out a cry of pain. My cry disappeared underneath a hollow roaring sound that seemed to fill every corner of the Outbuilding. That was the heating system blowing warm air through the place.

  Then, smirking, the guards withdrew, leaving the Outbuilding and closing the door behind them.

  Now I was alone with Dunbar.

  When I was able to look, I saw the Yard King standing over me. Slowly, painfully, I raised my eyes from his shoe tips and blinked up at him. For a long moment, he was just a foggy figure seen dimly through a haze of pain. Bit by bit, the haze passed and he came into focus. It wasn’t a pleasant sight.

  The thick, squat man stood with his legs akimbo. His knuckly face looked down at me. Nastiness seemed to come off him in waves. His cheeks were flushed with it and his eyes almost seemed to glow. When he spoke, it was with the voice of a volcano: It sounded as if it came from some hot, bubbling place deep down inside him. It was as if he could hardly contain the thrill he felt at the idea of pounding me half to death

  “What did you think, garbage boy?” he said. The sound of that voice burned right through me. “When you were talking tough in the infirmary. Huh? What did you think?” He nudged me with his shoe tip. “I’m asking you a question.”

  I groaned in answer. It was all I could manage.

  “When you put your hands on me like I was just one of your fellow garbage cons,” Dunbar went on. “What exactly were you thinking? Really. I’m curious to know.” He nudged me again. “Did you think you’d never be back here? Did you think I’d never get another chance at you?” He let out a brief laugh. He shook his head. “You cons are so dumb. Don’t you understand? In here, behind these walls, time is always on my side. Always. Eventually, I always get my chance.”

  I flinched as he crouched down over me. He grinned at that. He liked to see my fear. He chuckled.

  Carefully I slipped the knife out of my sleeve into my palm. I wrapped my fingers around the rope-grip handle.

  “Oh, you con, you garbage,” Dunbar said, shaking his head again. “Let me tell you something: This is gonna hurt you way, way more than it hurts me.” He reached down to grab me.

  And then I was on him.

  I don’t think I’d ever moved so fast in my life. I wasn’t sure what was going to happen next-when the escape would begin or how or when-but I knew it was going to be soon, any minute, and there was no time to lose.

  Before Dunbar could react, before he could even get that sadistic grin off his face, I sprang off the floor and grabbed him by the hair. At the same time, I threw a body block into him. Crouched down the way he was, he was completely off-balance. I drove him to the floor and got on top of him, my knees pinning his arms, my knife-blade set against the soft flesh under his chin.

  I pressed my face close to his. I spoke in a low whisper, the words tumbling out quickly.

  “Listen to me, Dunbar. Listen to me good. Any second now, some of Blade’s thug pals are gonna come through that wall. You read me, chucklehead?”

  Dunbar couldn’t believe what was happening. He couldn’t understand what I was saying. “What?”

  I banged his head against the floor. “Listen! I’m supposed to kill you now, do you understand me?”

  “I…”

  I banged his head again. “Do you?”

  He nodded quickly. “Yes! Yes! Don’t kill me! Please!”

  “It doesn’t matter whether I do or not. If I don’t kill you, you can bet Blade or one of his crazies will, okay?”

  “Please,” he said again, terrified.

  “You got one chance, one choice. Which is to do what I tell you to do, you read me?”

  “Yes, yes, anything, what?”

  “Act dead. Play dead. Understand? Play dead or you will be dead. That’s a guarantee.”

  Before he could answer, I let him go. His head fell back against the floor. Before he could think, I took the knife away from his throat and held it t
o my arm. Taking a quick breath against the pain, I cut myself-a nice long slash.

  Man, it hurt. It hurt like you wouldn’t believe. A long second of pure, stinging pain. Then the thick blood began to flow. Dunbar tried to lift his head, but I jammed my arm under his throat, knocking him back, making him gag. I rubbed the arm back and forth against him so that my blood was smeared all over him. It wasn’t going to look convincing, but I hoped it would do the trick in the rush and confusion that was sure to come.

  I jumped off the Yard King. It wasn’t easy to move, let me tell you. I had to ignore the pain all over my body from all the punishment I’d taken. But I did ignore it. What had to be done had to be done.

  I grabbed Dunbar by the shirtfront and hauled him up to his knees. I dragged him to a dark corner of the Outbuilding as he struggled to get his feet under him. All the while I was dragging him, I was talking to him under my breath.

  “There’s a mall near here,” I told him. “An unfinished mall about two miles away. You know it?”

  “Yeah. Yeah,” Dunbar said weakly.

  “That’s where Blade and his boys are headed. Tell the cops. You got it? Tell the cops to cut them off. Stop them. Don’t let these clowns escape. They’re killers, every one of them.”

  I threw him against the wall. He sat down hard, his back pressed to the cinder blocks.

  “Lie down and play dead, Dunbar,” I said. “They’ll be here any second and if you don’t look dead, you will be.”

  I heard a noise behind me. I turned-but there was no one else in the Outbuilding. Not yet anyway.

  Suddenly, while I was turned like that, Dunbar grabbed my arm.

  I spun around on him, drawing back the knife to threaten him.

  But he wasn’t on the attack. He was too stunned and scared for that. He was just gaping up at me, his eyes wide, his mouth open.

  “Why…?” he whispered.

  “What?”

  “Why didn’t you do it?”

  I shook my head. I didn’t understand him.

  “You were supposed to kill me,” said Dunbar. “Why didn’t you?”

  For another second, I still couldn’t figure out what he was saying. But then I got it: He really didn’t know. He really didn’t understand.

  “I beat you,” he said. “I’d’ve beat you again, worse this time, much worse. I might have killed you and you know it. Now you had your big chance. Why didn’t you kill me?”

  Angrily, I yanked my arm free of his grasp. He fell back against the wall.

  “I haven’t got time to explain it to you, Dunbar,” I said. “Try to figure it out for yourself.”

  The Yard King seemed about to speak again-but then he tensed, afraid. All at once, he slumped over, lay on the floor, his eyes shut, his mouth open. At first, I thought he’d fainted. But then I realized: He was pretending to be dead.

  That’s when I looked over my shoulder and saw the hole in the dirt floor.

  Blade’s people had arrived.

  CHAPTER SIXTEEN

  Breakout

  The entrance to the tunnel seemed to have appeared silently. At first, it was just a small break in the base of the cinder blocks. I could see the edge of a pickax working at it, prying off chunks of dirt, making the hole larger. How they had broken through so quietly, I don’t know, but I guess at least some of the noise had been covered up by the roar of the heating system. In any case, now I could see a pair of bright eyes peering up at me from the darkness beneath.

  What happened next happened quickly but in the same weird dreamlike quiet. With any noise covered by the blasting air, it seemed like a silent movie. Blade and three of his fellow musclemen suddenly stepped through the Outbuilding door.

  I was stunned by how easy it was. “Where are the guards outside?”

  “Some of our boys have them distracted,” Blade said. “Come on.”

  Then I was moving with them, surrounded by them. We were at the wall, at the break in the floor. Quickly, one by one, we were kneeling down. I watched two men wriggle through the break and disappear into the darkness.

  I saw Blade cast a look across the long room at Dunbar. I followed his gaze. The Yard King was lying sprawled in the shadows at the far end of the room. You could just make out the dark stain of blood-my blood-on his throat and on the front of his shirt. I had been right. Moving as quickly as we were, he looked plenty dead enough to pass.

  Blade nodded at me. “Good work,” he said. “I didn’t think you had it in you.”

  Then he went down to the ground and lowered himself through the hole.

  I watched the top of his head sink down into nothingness. Then I lowered myself after him.

  The moment I went over the side, I felt the ground open beneath my feet. My fingers touched a rope. I took hold of it, my hand sticky with drying blood. Wrapping my feet around it, I started sliding down. Blade was directly under my feet. Another man-the last man- was sliding down directly above my head.

  Then we were on the ground somewhere below the earth. We were moving quickly in a tightly packed group through the darkness. There were flashlight beams lancing the black air, but they didn’t illuminate much. A wall. The shoulder of a gray uniform. A face, taut and eager, moving forward. All of us moving fast.

  There were noises. Rapid breaths. Grunts of effort. Curses. Quick, padding footsteps. Now and then, a voice:

  “This way.”

  “Quick.”

  “Out of my way.”

  “Come on.”

  I kept stumbling forward through the blackness.

  After a while, I had the sense I was descending. It was hard to tell in the dark. I heard a splash up ahead. Then the smell-what a stink!-washed up over me. Seconds later, I splashed into it too. The smell rose around me like smoke, wrapped itself around me, choking me, like smoky fingers on my throat.

  I understood we were moving through the sewers now.

  After that, there were turns and drops and climbs. Dancing flashlight beams. Glimpses of faces. A confusion of motion. There were moments when we were on some dry surface and moments when we were plunged thigh-deep in awful stinking mess. Soon, it all seemed to run together, a long, dark nightmare of panting motion through a nauseating stench. On and on we went, traveling through the connecting tunnels and tubes.

  I don’t know how long we ran. Sometimes we slowed to a kind of jog, but there was no stopping. I was afraid my strength would give out, but no. I could practically feel the adrenaline pumping through me, the energy surging in my limbs, unbelievably steady and unstoppable. My whole inner world was filled with the rhythm of my heart hammering and my lungs working. The pain- the pain I knew was pulsing in every part of me-the pain I knew was still there, always there-seemed somehow far away for the moment, buried beneath the electric surface of that pumped-up adrenaline high. The punches from Blade, the beating from the guards, the cut I’d dug into my own flesh with the knife: Yeah, they throbbed and ached and stung as I pushed myself to keep moving, but the ache seemed almost to belong to someone else, not me.

  I ran and ran, breathless. I tried to get my brain working as we went down another corridor of stink and mess. One thing was on my mind and one thing only: We were rushing into a trap.

  I had tipped Dunbar off. I had told him we were heading for the mall. I didn’t know how long it would take him to sound the alarm or how fast the police would respond or how far they had to travel. But if the cops weren’t waiting for us at the mall when we got there, they would get there soon enough. That would make it tough for me to get away. I would have to make my escape not just from Blade but from the cops as well. I wished I hadn’t had to do it, to tell Dunbar the plan. But I couldn’t just let this killer Blade and his pals escape. I had to make sure they were captured again. I just didn’t see any other choice.

  All this raced through my mind as I raced through the darkness. Stumbling along in the stench and wet. Crushed in with these thugs as they rushed desperately toward what they thought was freedom-a freedom
I knew they would never have.

  At last, panting, flagging, stumbling, we came around a bend in the dark corridor and I heard several voices at once.

  “There.”

  “Oh man!”

  “I see it, I see it!”

  I saw it too: light. A dim gray glow that seemed to pour down into the darkness like water. It was the way out, the way back to the upper world.

  I could feel the others around me tense with hope and expectation. I could hear the beat of their breathing change. As the flashlight beams crisscrossed this way and that around us, I could see their faces, their bright, desperate faces, suddenly full of hope; their gazes yearning for that light up ahead, yearning for freedom.

  More whispers:

  “Oh yeah, yeah, yeah.”

  “Baby, there we go.”

  “We are going home.”

  We all want the same thing, I guess. Killers or no, good or bad. We all want to be free. We all want to go home.

  I looked ahead, down the tunnel, at the cascade of faint gray light growing brighter as we grew near. I was thinking: What now? What do I do when the police surround us? How do I break away?

  I didn’t know the answer and not knowing made me afraid. What if I made a run for it and the cops opened fire and shot me down? What if the cops showed up and Blade guessed I had tipped them off and he killed me?

  What if-here was the really bad one-what if I tried to run and got captured again? My lawyer’s appeal would be ruined. Even with all the help Rose had given me, no one would believe I was innocent now.

  That thought made my inner world darken even as we moved to the light ahead. It was one thing to think about getting shot to death, it was something else- something much worse-to think about getting stuck in Abingdon for the rest of my life.

  As we covered the last few yards to that gray glow, I tried to remind myself why I had done this. The Great Death. I had to stop it. I had to try, no matter what. No matter what.

  I fought off my fears and pushed on.