The Tower (1999) (45 page)

Eenie meenie minie moe

There was no sign of Allander and Jade moved faster, his run edged with panic as his feet expertly gripped the uneven ground, propelling him forward. He finally caught sight of a broken sapling just on the brink of the ridge and he ran past it, barely glancing down.

Saliva drooled from his brother's chin as he struggled to his feet.

Catch a retard by the toe

One hand went to the straw by Mr. Hollow's cuff (a hand, I swear he thought it was a hand) and the other reached out toward the sun setting atop the rolling hills, showering the foxtails with orange. His mouth was awash with blood and spit and he opened it and screamed a word, one word, his last word: Jade--a sound that would echo in Jade's memory for years.

Make him holler blow by blow

A fist closed the mouth as it yelled and Jade burst into the clearing as his brother toppled backward, his hands moving dumbly in the air, one holding tightly to a few loose strands of straw. He saw the panic in his brother's eyes as he reeled backward and heard the crack as his head struck one of the jagged stones framing the site, and heard a grunt--a low grunt, like an animal's--and then that was all, and he knew he had lost him. Then he was a whirlwind of knees and fists and elbows and he had lost his hat on the ground and he didn't even know what was moving his body, but when he reached his brother there were four boys lying around him coughing blood and whimpering.

Jade ducked and dodged reflexively, his eyes straining in the faint light to spot broken branches and trampled bushes. He rounded a tree at full speed and a jagged limb caught him across the left cheek, slicing along the line of his scar. Once again, he felt the hot blood oozing down his cheek.

His focus on the path ahead was so intense that the cut barely registered. He came to a clearing and halted, unsure in which direction to continue. In the dim glow, he spotted a broken branch, and he sprinted past it, back on course.

The boys were clutching their legs and stomachs, and tears streamed down their bruised faces. The boy who was Jade knelt down in the clearing and looked into the blank eyes of his brother. He felt the hole across the back of his head when he put his hand there to hold him against his chest, and as he sat with his dead brother under the brilliant sun, he felt the blood spreading stickily through his clothes and across his stomach.

Eenie meenie minie moe.

Jade pounded through the brush. He felt exhausted, but also somehow purged. It had finally come flooding through him, and he realized for the first time that his brother's panicked cries had long ago blended with the cries of other victims. Though Jade couldn't save them all, he had spent his life making sure that they didn't die on his shift, on his time.

Fear had propelled him, whipping him: What if you're not there, Jade? What if you can't stop another life from slipping away? He had to oversee all things dark and dreadful--he had to reign over it all. Fear was his bedmate and his lover. Fear was his anger and his hatred. Fear was the burden he had carried ever since childhood, just as it was Allander's.

He felt as if he was stirring from sleep, lost in the aftermath of a dream. A few lingering cries still rang in his ears. He heard them behind him now, and he picked up his pace, feeling adrenaline pumping again and thinking of Claude Rivers and the guard ahead. He was sprinting so fast he couldn't really see where he was going.

Bursting into a small clearing, Jade whirled around, searching for signs of Allander's path, desperately trying to remember in which direction the Tower waited. It was silent here except for the noise of his own labored breathing.

He sensed that the ridge he was running was parallel to the Maingate entrance. He looked at the trees ahead, then turned and faced down the slope. From his angle, it looked almost impossibly steep. The creek running below wasn't moving very fast, but it looked rocky. He glanced back up along the ridge, and suddenly realized he had to change direction.

"The quickest distance," he said in a low, growling voice as he stepped off the ridge.

He tried to keep his feet ahead of his torso as the slope carried his body to a full sprint, but about halfway down, his shoulders passed his center of gravity and he tumbled over, hurtling out of control down to the river below. The thick weeds that ran along the creek slowed his fall before he crashed into the icy water, but since he couldn't see it coming, he gasped at the shock. He pulled himself up, feeling heavy in his wet clothes, and sloshed through the creek to the other side. The pain of a thousand different bruises stung him, but as far as he could tell, he hadn't sustained a serious injury. It took him a few steps before he could feel his legs under him again, and then he ran into the forest, leaving the creek and the ridge behind.

Twenty feet later, he broke through the trees, and the steel gates of Maingate lay open before him. He saw a shadow flash, deep within the prison. He had been right--after all the struggle, Allander had returned to his starting point.

Jade sprinted through the gates.

Allander threw the bag of supplies in the speedboat, untied the rope mooring it to the dock, and revved the motor, edging the boat out into the turbulent water. As he pulled away, the rope slid from the dock to the water, where it trailed the boat like a slippery eel.

Loud, hammering footsteps sounded on the dock, and as Allander turned to look, he saw a shadowed figure take flight after the boat. He screamed and jerked the throttle all the way down.

A sudden peace washed over Jade as he broke the water's surface. He had aimed his jump at the retreating rope, so he was not surprised to feel its coarse fibers against his palm. It jerked suddenly away and slid through his hand, tearing the skin along his palm. Despite the pain, Jade squeezed down tight on the rope. His body lurched forward, and he was off in a spray of bubbles.

Bound together, even through the jagged waters of the inlet, Allander and Jade headed for the Tower.

Chapter
58

A S he steered the boat, Allander noticed the drag of Jade's weight, and he could see a figure outlined beneath the surface of the water. He thought of the inevitable pain spreading through Jade's arms, tightening his shoulders and tensing his stomach. And the burn, Allander thought. The burn in his lungs must be divine.

As the boat approached the base of the Tower, Allander steered a tight semicircle. Jade, who had been struggling to get his feet in front of his body, hoping to pull himself into a skiing position, felt his feet sinking as the sudden turn yanked his body forward. His torso half-broke the surface as he was flung into a new trajectory. Although the water slowed him, he was almost airborne as he saw the stone wall of the Tower rushing directly at him.

Bringing his knees to his chest, Jade struck the wall sideways, his body in the fetal position. A loud crunch in his hip and he knew the bone was shattered. He slid down the wall into the water's embrace.

Allander brought the boat forward, crashing hard into the side of the steel ladder that crept up the side of the Tower. It was low tide, so the lowest rung was above water. Straining, he pulled the bag up across his shoulders and seized the ladder's side rail. Laughing now with excitement at being so near his goal, he began the steady climb up. The strap from the bag dug into his shoulder, but he was too wired to pay attention to the pain. As he climbed, he stared up at the full moon, his face splitting in a grin.

Below him, a hand reached out of the water and gripped the bottom rung. Climbing hand over hand, Jade pulled his body from the sea. He was unable to use his legs, and they dangled uselessly below him. The rope burn on his palm stung horrifically, first with the saltwater and now with the pressure of his own weight. The ladder shifted under him, loose on the bolts from the speedboat collision. If he slipped, he knew he'd never be able to keep himself afloat in the water.

When Allander reached the top, he turned and looked back, noticing Jade struggling after him. In the dim light of the moon, their eyes locked for a moment. Allander smiled, then blew a kiss. He drew himself up from his crouch, his head momentarily framed by the full moon. Intoxicated by his sense of complete power, Allander threw back his head and laughed. Then he doubled over, shaking with childish laughter.

He noticed that the speedboat was drifting out to sea a little bit. He'd have to hurry through his plan before it floated farther away. Hearing a scraping noise, he turned and saw the guard lying near the Hole, gasping, his hands cupped around his throat. The bullet had nicked the side of his neck--a deep wound, but not lethal. The man's whole body heaved as he drew air, his limbs jerking almost mechanically. His hands were speckled with blood to the wrists, and his submachine gun lay on the ground a few feet from him.

Allander stormed over and kicked the gun down the Hole, then drew Jade's Glock and pressed the muzzle to the top of the guard's head. His eyes looked up at Allander, wild with terror, but he couldn't speak or even move away from the gun. He wheezed and sputtered, trying to hold his blood in his throat.

"Well, that wouldn't be very sporting, would it?" Allander said. He lifted the gun from the guard's head. "I've got better plans for you."

He walked to the edge of the Hole and peered down. "And for you, you fat wretch." He could see Claude's hands around the bars of Unit 11A, his face a fleshy white orb staring up at him. "You didn't do it, not as I'm going to. What's the fun of fornicating with a corpse? It's about cognizance--it's about looking into the eyes of the one who conceived you, holding sway over her, over life itself. It's in her knowing, you unworthy simian, not just the deed." The anger in his voice surprised him. "It's in the knowledge of what you're doing!"

He ran to the edge of the Tower to check on Jade again. He was still barely above the water's surface, hanging on and gasping for breath. Allander had time. He had plenty of time.

He walked over to a large diesel drum, hauling the heavy supply bag; he had watched them haul the drum up earlier in the week to refuel the water pump. He removed the large plug and noticed that the drum was almost empty. Pulling a tube from his bag, he siphoned some diesel fuel from the water-pump tank, sucking on the end of the tube to start the flow and spitting out a mouthful of the bitter liquid. After a certain amount of diesel fuel had poured into the drum, he yanked the tube out, letting the fuel wash over the top of the Tower. Then he removed three bags of fertilizer from his bag, raking them open with a knife. He dumped them into the drum, one after another, aiming the spill through the large plug hole.

Of course, he wasn't able to measure precisely, but he knew ANFO mixture well enough--7 percent fuel oil to 93 percent ammonium nitrate, found in common fertilizer.

Still clinging to the ladder, Jade shook his head, attempting to clear it. The water and the Tower were spinning crazily around him, and he tightened his hands around the rails, gathering the courage to raise his head. The ladder seemed to stretch up forever. He bit down on his lip and began the climb, the ladder, loose from being struck by the speedboat, shaking with his movements. He crawled willfully, steadily, pulling his straining hands closer to Allander's throat.

For the first time, he noticed how much he really hurt. He counted his injuries with each rung. The gun to my head, the cut in my cheek, the fall down the slope, the Tower up my ass. He felt for his pistol, but it was gone. He was not surprised.

Aware of the need to act quickly, Allander sprinted over to check on Jade once more. He was down about forty rungs, moving slowly, but moving nonetheless. Allander knocked the drum on its side and rolled it a few times, mixing the diesel and ammonium nitrate as best he could.

He'd taken a stick of dynamite from the site at Maingate because the only blasting caps he could find were eights, which weren't too reliable when used alone with an ANFO mixture. The his and hers cell phones he'd stolen were lying side by side in the bottom of the bag, and he picked them up, sliding one of them into his pocket. The back panel was already removed from the other one, and he had pulled out and stripped the two wires that ran to the ringer. He intertwined each one now with a wire from the blasting cap, then wound the phone, the primer, and the dynamite in electrical tape and dropped the whole thing into the drum. It landed on the ANFO mixture with a wet thud. He hammered the large metal plug back into the drum, then rolled it over to the edge of the Hole.

He crouched over the choking guard, gently peeling back the guard's blood-drenched jacket and removing the elevator control from his inner pocket.

With a click of the button, he lowered the elevator platform to roof level, then pushed the big drum onto it. He walked back and kicked the guard once in the side as hard as he could. The guard gasped as he rolled onto the platform, his head clanging against the drum.

Jade still inched up the ladder, rung by rung, ignoring the pain through his cramped arms. He had to make it. He had to get his hands on Allander, but he was still a good twenty yards away.

Allander pushed the red button and the platform started to descend into the Hole. They'd done an admirable job of repairing the elevator, he thought with a snicker.

Claude watched the bomb and the wheezing guard descend past him, his expression unchanged. He scratched himself, then looked up at Allander with unfrightened interest. The guard's rasps echoed inside the Tower, bouncing off the hard stone walls.