Hell and Gone (23 page)

YEAH, THIS WAS IT.

Hardie had a suspicion this might be the place, but it wasn’t until he saw the loading area—through which he entered now—that he completely and for sure
recognized
the place.

This was where they’d stuffed him into that life-support trunk…what was it, more than five years ago?

And see, it felt like just yesterday they’d sentenced him to a life of unconsciousness and forced detention.

With each step Hardie steeled himself to be ready to open fire. Left hand on the cane, right hand on the gun. Left arm was still the weakest but he still felt the cane was the wisest choice for that hand. He could fall, he could be knocked down—but at least he’d still be able to shoot no matter what. And there would be nothing worse than to raise his left arm to blow somebody away only to discover that
oops, sorry, body, the left hand is unable to take your call right now, please try again later.

Hardie fully expected to be blowing people away any second now.

If his memory served—and this place was the last thing Hardie remembered before waking up, handcuffed, in that room with that bitch Mann—then this secret little hospital facility should be absolutely crawling with armed guards. He needed to move as quickly as a man with a cane could move. The first gunshot would alert the rest; then it would be a simple matter of Hardie having enough bullets to take out every person between himself and Abrams.

Curiously, the loading area was deserted. No resistance as Hardie made his way up a cement ramp. No locked doors. No one guarding the hallway leading back to offices and operating rooms.

Abrams was sitting at a desk in a small office when Hardie walked in. Just sitting there, newspaper in front of her, remnants of a grapefruit and a glass of orange juice next to it. Hardie had caught her having a morning snack.

Hardie showed her the gun, cane-stepping toward the desk, saying, “Don’t move.”

“Okay, I won’t move,” she said. “What can I do for you?”

Hardie shoved the gun into her mouth. He even heard the metal chip her tooth enamel. Smudged her lipstick, too.

“Nugh,” Abrams said, wincing.

“You stole five years of my life. I’ve killed your partners. Gedney first, then Doyle. I’m going to kill you next unless we reach some kind of arrangement. I don’t want your word. I want an honest-to-fucking-god arrangement, or however you pieces of shit do things. Airtight, locked down, the whole thing. You’ve done it before, you’re going to do it now.”

Abrams, mouth wrapped around Hardie’s ballistic “cock,” waited to see if Hardie was finished speaking. Eyes wide open and patient.

“Do you understand me?” Hardie asked.

Abrams nodded gently, the gun moving up and down in Hardie’s hand slightly.

Hardie slid the gun out of her mouth. A trail of saliva followed with it. Abrams wiped her lips with the back of her hand, smearing more lipstick. She felt her front teeth, felt the chip. Shook her head, disappointed.

“Why don’t you have a seat?” she said. “I promise I won’t move, if that’s what you’re worried about.”

“No.”

“Your leg must be killing you by now. Seems you’ve got—”

“Shut the fuck up. There’s only one thing I want to hear from you. And that’s how you’re going to convince me that nothing else will happen to me or my family.”

“I suppose giving you my word wouldn’t do the trick, huh?”

Hardie flashed back to Eve, down in the prison, giving him a look:

Duh.

“Okay,” Abrams said. “Let’s get down to it, then. You claim we stole five years of your life, and for that, you killed Gedney.”

“And Doyle.”

“We’ll get to that in a minute. From where I sit, however, we did
not
steal five years of your life. You were in a coma for almost four of those years, and then in physical rehabilitation at a facility in Grand Island, Nebraska, for about a year. And sure, you could make the claim that we put you in that coma. But you were not responding to traditional amounts of anesthesia, as I recall, and you were in danger of hurting yourself. We had to take action to save your life.”

“I was in…a
what?
”

“A coma. And not our fault, Mr. Hardie. We were endeavoring to save your life. You were scouted. And we thought you’d be ideal for future projects. While you caused the Industry more than a little grief, we all saw it as a trade-off. Yes, Lee Harvey Oswald killed the president of the United States. But that kid sure can shoot, so let’s get him on board. Do you understand?”

“What are you talking about? I don’t remember…”

“Of course you don’t. Throughout the therapy sessions you were stubborn. Incorrigible, actually. A tremendous pain in the ass. Oh, you played along enough to actually bring your body back online, to some degree. But our staff knew you were up to something. And as soon as you deemed yourself physically fit, you tried to escape.”

“Guess I didn’t pull it off.”

“You came close. Killed quite a few people, too.”

This was a lot like hearing about all the great fun you had while stinking drunk just before you passed out on the lawn. All the pain, none of the satisfaction.

“So,” Abrams continued, “we decided that you weren’t the right man for the project we had in mind at the time. Still, you were a potential asset, and we never just throw away our assets. You were sent to site seven seven three four with a group of other potential assets. Your memory loss is normal. We wipe out about a year’s worth before sending anyone down there. Keeps the place secret.”

“Right.”

“Of course, site seven seven three four is useless to us now. Not long after you did away with Mr. Gedney, we sent a team down there and found it abandoned. Not a single living being. Not a single corpse.”

“Whoopsie.”

“No matter. That’s another issue entirely. I’m just trying to impress upon you that this claim that we stole five years of your life is really kind of silly. Not sure what we’re guilty of, other than trying to save your life and protecting our interests.”

“Gee, if only your pals had explained it to me that way,” Hardie said.

Abrams smiled. “The fact that you escaped…that’s truly remarkable. Makes me see your potential in a whole new light.”

“Not interested. Let’s talk terms, or you can join your pals Gedney and Doyle right now.”

“Just Gedney.”

“Huh?”

“If you shoot me, I’ll only be seeing Gedney. That is, if you believe in life after death. Which I do not. But whatever.”

“Doyle’s dead.”

“Mr. Doyle is alive and on his way to the hospital. We were talking to him from the back of the vehicle—there’s a wireless communications system back there. It cut out a little on the Pacific Coast Highway, but we were able to tell him how long to hold out, what to say to bring you here.”

“Why? Why not just kill me on the open road? You could probably have blown up the car by remote.”

Abrams sighed. “You’re not listening to me, Mr. Hardie. You’re still an asset. Blowing you up would get us what, exactly? A warm, tingly feeling inside? Grow up.”

Oh, how Hardie’s trigger finger twitched. One little squeeze, a spray of skin and bone and blood…

“I see you’re impatient. So here’s our offer. We still want you for this project. Gedney wasn’t sure, but Gedney’s dead. And unlike your stint in site seven seven three four, this project is aboveboard. We’ll tell you everything. Exactly what’s expected of you. In short, one year of service, doing what you do best.”

“What’s that?”

“Guarding something.”

Hardie thought about it, then shot Abrams in the face.

Okay, he didn’t.

He badly wanted to, and the fantasy sequence that ran through his mind was so, so tempting. But instead Hardie asked,

“What do you want me to guard?”

“Agree and we’ll tell you everything.”

“What do I get in return?”

“A clean slate. Do this job for us and in one year you can walk away. Go back to your life, if you want.”

“And if I refuse?”

Abrams shrugged and showed him her palms. “Look, I don’t have to sell you on our capabilities. Your wife and son have been left unmolested. If you decide to kill me and continue on with this rampage of yours, it won’t end well. For any of us.”

Hardie thought about it, then shot Abrams in the face.

Wanted to.

Wanted to oh so fucking badly.

But for years now Hardie had been doing just what he wanted, and where had that gotten him?

Sometimes your guts know it before you do. You’re about to take a step off a curb and your guts are screaming
NO NO NO YOU FUCKING MORON
but you feel your foot leave the cement anyway, hanging in the air, thinking that when you set it down again in 1.4 seconds you’re going to find solid ground beneath you, just like the billion other times you lifted your foot with the intention of putting it down again. You think your gut is wrong, your gut is being paranoid, just take a step, just like you’ve always done…

Hardie placed the gun on the desktop, nodded, took a step back, balancing himself on his cane.

Abrams allowed herself a polite smile, then settled back into her chair.

Almost immediately armed gunmen poured into the room, automatic weapons in their hands. They were trained; they’d clearly practiced this move a hundred times before. They surrounded Hardie in such a way that if he went for his gun on the desk his arm would be separated from the rest of his body by a flurry of bullets.

That didn’t mean he didn’t think about it, though.

One second to fall forward…

Another second to grab the gun…

One last second to pull the trigger and destroy her face.

Surely he could endure the agony of a hundred bullets blasting through his body, severing veins and shattering bone and spraying gray matter for three seconds?

Yeah. Right.

“That was a wise choice,” Abrams said. “You probably could have killed me, but you wouldn’t have made it out of this room alive. Your family would have died within the hour, too. We have Mann and her team assembled in Philadelphia right now. And while it may have felt good to take my life, that would not have done a thing to change our operations. I am not the be-all and end-all of the Industry. I’m just an employee. Just like you.”

Hardie looked around the room, all those guns pointed at him, the utter hopelessness of it all.

He laughed. “I should have just run.”

“We would have found you.”

“I should have pulled the trigger,” Hardie said. “You’re going to kill me anyway.”

Abrams smiled and leaned back in her chair, put her feet up on the desk. She wore boots with heels tall and sharp enough to lobotomize a man through his eye sockets.

“Oh, Mr. Hardie,” she said. “It’s much worse than that.”

PEOPLE ALL OVER
Southern California heard the explosion—a kind of end-of-the-world roar that brought certain Santa Barbara residents to their windows, fearing the worst. When you looked up into the pale blue sky you saw the missile and the trail of fire almost as long as the missile itself and your heart seized—but for just a moment. Because this missile—a rocket, actually, 235 feet tall—was zooming away from Southern California at 17,500 miles per hour, not screaming toward it.

Older residents, though, were used to such launches. Vandenberg Air Force Base was nearby, and ever since the 1960s the government had been launching all kinds of space shit up from Slick Six—the nickname for Space Launch Complex-6.

The newcomers, on the other hand, were mesmerized by the sight, at least once the initial fear drained away. They summoned their kids and went outside to their perfectly maintained lawns and pointed up at the sky, idly wondering if they should invest in a telescope. Might be cool to show the kids these kinds of things. Or maybe start looking up at the stars on a regular basis.

Within the hour, however, the explosion and the rocket and the fire trail and the telescope and everything else were forgotten, and people got back to their lives. Miracles are cool and all. But there are things to do.

Hardie woke up cold.

Freezing cold.

He opened his eyes.

No memory problems this time. There had been no need for a shot. The training had been important; he needed to remember every piece of it. There was a checklist of duties to perform.

But this morning he indulged himself and looked in on his family first.

Kendra was making chicken soup. Both she and Charlie, Jr., were fighting colds. Kendra had already taken apart the chicken and was now chopping thick carrot slices. Made him nervous to watch her fingers move so quickly, chop chop chop chop chop chop chop, even though her fingers were curled under, just as they were supposed to be. Still, fingers could slip. And if something should happen…

Charlie, Jr., was in the living room, holding up an imaginary gun and blasting away digital opponents on a flat screen. Nothing real, except the anger on his face. You could tell when he got off a particularly gory shot, because his eyes lit up in a certain way. Partly appalled, partly amused.

Hardie’s family.

They were right there in front of him.

Actually, they weren’t. Their
digital images
were right there in front of Hardie, on the screen. His actual wife and son—their flesh-and-blood bodies—were far, far below.

He should be passing over them soon, actually.