The Truth of the Matter (11 page)

But before I could, Waylon suddenly stopped in his tracks. He wheeled toward M-2. My flying pal was moving too fast to stop. He was too close to get out of the way. I peeked out from behind the column. I knew what was going to happen a second before Waylon pulled the trigger.

Waylon fired and M-2 exploded in a sparking, sizzling white and red flash. I felt my little friend die in the rattle of the controller in my hand.

But there was no time to mourn for plastic and wires when so much flesh and blood were at stake. Waylon’s back was turned to me as he shot M-2 out of the air. I seized the opportunity. I bolted from behind the column, hurling the useless controller away as I ran.

The ruin of a large, warehouse-like building stood in the mist off to my right. I ran for it, hoping to reach cover before Waylon could turn and find me. I was almost there when he opened fire. My heart seized with terror at that deadly, rattling sound. A bullet ricocheted off the wall of the building just ahead of me. I threw up my arms to protect my face as I was hit by flying shards of plaster.

Then I was there, dodging behind the same wall, out of the range of the stream of bullets.

I raced along beside the building. If I could reach the far side before Waylon came around behind me, I might have a chance of breaking around the corner for cover and then dashing all the way into the trees.

I ran full tilt, my face contorted with the effort, barely aware of my own exhaustion and breathlessness. All I could think was that any second Waylon might clear the corner behind me and pump a stream of machine-gun bullets into my spine.

I was nearly there. Running. Nearly there.

And then two guards stepped out in front of me, blocking my way.

CHAPTER FOURTEEN
Zero

It was two of the guards I’d hit with tear gas. A moment later, the third one joined them. Then the fourth—the lanky blond guy M-2 had laid out with his blaster. All four of them blocked my way with machine guns lifted directly at me.

There was nowhere to go. No way to escape without being turned into Swiss cheese. I pulled up short. I saw the Homelanders’ fingers tighten on the triggers of their weapons. I thought they were going to shoot me dead then and there.

“Put your hands up!”

The voice came from behind me. I looked around and saw Waylon at my back. He had his machine gun trained on me too.

“Put ’em up!” he shouted again.

I raised my hands over my head. I turned to face him.

He stalked toward me angrily. I expected him to pull the trigger any second. But he kept coming until he was standing mere inches away from me, his furious eyes peering into mine. He stood like that a long second, his teeth bared. Then . . .

“Pig!” he said, and he slapped me.

It was a hard shot with the back of his hand. It landed full force to the side of the face, nearly knocking me over. I fell two steps to the side, my face stinging, my head feeling thick, my vision blurred.

Before I could recover, Waylon grabbed me by the front of my fleece and swung me around, hurling me against the side of the building. I gave a loud “Oof!” as the impact knocked the wind out of me. Waylon gripped the fleece harder, twisting it back so that his fist pushed into my throat, cutting off my air. He leaned in close to me as I struggled for breath.

“I ought to kill you right where you stand,” he said in his thick guttural accent. “And I will kill you, that’s a promise. I will kill you just as surely as I killed your friend in the bunker.”

“Waylon . . . ,” said one of the other guards, a husky man with a big handlebar mustache.

“Shut up!” Waylon shouted—and the handlebar guy did as he was told.

Waylon’s face was close to mine. His fist dug into my throat. He grinned as I gasped and choked. Something stirred in my mind, some memory of him linked with fear. I didn’t know who Waylon was—I still couldn’t recover his image from wherever it was hidden in my brain—but it was there, all right, somewhere, and the memory was associated with terror.

“But before I kill you, we’re going to have a talk,” he told me. “We’re going to finish the conversation we started before you ran away. And this time, there’s not going to be any escape. This time, you’re going to tell me everything.”

“Waylon . . . ,” said the handlebar guy again.

Waylon ignored him. He was enjoying himself too much. He was enjoying his threats, enjoying the fear he must’ve seen in my eyes, enjoying my fight for breath as he twisted his fist into my throat.

But even as his threats and his rank breath washed over me, I understood what the handlebar guy was trying to tell him, I understood what was going to happen next, and I was getting ready for it.

“There’s no one left to help you,” Waylon said. “All of Waterman’s friends have run off like the cowards they are. There’s only one other person who knows about you at all. And before you die—which will be in agony, by the way—you’re going to tell me who he is, and you’re going to die knowing that I’m going to kill him too. Because we’re almost ready to—”

And then the bunker blew up underneath us.

The time on the bomb had finally winked down to zero. The explosives went off and the blast was tremendous. Everything in that bunker—including Waterman’s body—must have been blown to smithereens.

And it rocked the ground above as well. It shook under my feet like an earthquake had hit. The four guards staggered—but they’d been waiting for it—waiting and trying to warn Waylon that it was coming. But Waylon hadn’t listened. He’d been so completely distracted by his dealings with me that the noise and the rumble took him totally by surprise.

His eyes went wide and he lost his grip on me, instinctively grabbing his gun to keep it secure as he stumbled a step to the side. It was only a step. He was about to recover.

But before he could, I punched him.

It was a full-force uppercut. I’d been ready to throw it, waiting for the chance. And, to be perfectly honest, it had a little extra charge in it because, for some reason, I just didn’t much like this guy. My fist connected with his jaw. He would’ve gone flying backward if I hadn’t grabbed hold of his arm with my left hand at the same time. Quickly, I twisted him around and wrapped my arm around his throat, holding him in front of me, between me and the other guards. I took hold of his gun and twisted it upward, jamming the barrel under his chin.

The four guards had recovered from the force of the blast and had their guns leveled at me, but they froze when they saw me using Waylon as a shield.

“Stay where you are,” I told them. “I don’t want to kill him, but I will.”

And I would’ve too.

Waylon was still heavy in my grasp, nearly unconscious from the uppercut to his chin. He was woozy and staggering. Only by using all my strength could I keep him in place in front of me.

“You got nowhere to go, West,” the blond guard growled at me furiously.

But I was already backing away from him, backing away from all of them, edging toward the trees that surrounded the ruins.

“West!” the blond guard shouted in his fury and frustration.

I kept going, backing away, holding Waylon up in front of me, holding his gun up under his chin. As I came to the edge of the ruins, there was some sort of structure standing there in the morning mist: the slanted ruin of a wall, I guess, with rebar sticking out here and there from the concrete.

I slipped behind the structure, out of range of the guns of the other four guards.

Just then, Waylon started to come around, started to struggle in my grip. I slammed him into the concrete. He grunted. And while I had him pressed dazed against the wall, I stripped the machine gun off his shoulder.

I backed away from him, the gun leveled at him.

He turned slowly. His dark face looked lopsided as it swelled in the place where I’d slugged him. His eyes were bright—nearly white it seemed with the light of the hatred burning in them.

“Where do you think you’ll go?” he snarled at me. “The police want you. Your own people don’t know you. You can only bring danger to your friends. Even if you get away, I will hunt you down, so help me.”

“Then maybe I ought to kill you here and now,” I said.

Waylon laughed. “But you won’t.”

I didn’t answer. I knew he was right about that. There was no way I was going to pull the trigger on an unarmed man.

Now the other guards were coming into sight, moving around to get a bead on me around the side of the wall.

“Call them off,” I said to Waylon. “Tell them to lower their guns. I won’t kill you if I can help it, but if they start shooting, I start shooting—and you’re the first to go. They can’t kill me quick enough to stop it.”

Waylon glanced to the left and right where the guards were spreading out to surround me. I could see he didn’t want to give the order. But I could also see he didn’t want to die.

“Lower your guns,” he shouted—barely able to get the words out through his clenched teeth. “Lower them.”

I glanced at the guards. They were still aiming at me.

“Do it!” I shouted. “Do it now or I’ll kill him!”

One by one, the Homelanders pointed their machine guns at the ground.

I started backing away from Waylon, backing away from the ruins, backing into the mist that gathered where the forest began.

Rubbing the side of his face where I’d punched him, working his jaw against the pain, Waylon kept his angry eyes on me.

“I’ll be seeing you, West,” he said.

I didn’t answer. I was pretty sure he was right. We weren’t finished with each other.

I felt a chill as I stepped into the deeper shade of the trees, as the forest mist closed around me. It was the chill of the damp and cold, but it was a chill of fear as well.

With one last glance at the Homelanders standing there, I turned and sprinted into the trees as fast as I could.

CHAPTER FIFTEEN
The End of the Chase

I heard Waylon’s furious shout behind me: “Go after him!”

I looked back over my shoulder as I ran. I saw the guards coming into the woods, hunting for me. But they were moving slowly. Wary, watchful. I had a gun now, and they knew I could turn around any minute and open fire on them if they just charged blindly ahead. They were scanning the trees, pushing branches and brush out of their way to make sure the path was clear before stepping forward.

I, on the other hand, ran full speed. I cut like a deer through the mist and shade, dodging under branches, leaping over roots and stones, flashing in and out of sudden patches of sunlight and large areas of deeper darkness, trying to put as much distance between myself and my pursuers as I could.

When I looked back again, I couldn’t see them. I couldn’t see anything but the tangle of trees and forest vines. I stopped. I leaned the machine gun against a tree. I bent over, my hands on my knees. I was gasping, trying to catch my breath. For a moment or two, my panting was the only sound I could hear.

Finally, when I could, I breathed more softly. I listened. Yes, I could still hear the Homelanders. I could hear their footsteps crunching on the forest duff. I could hear them calling to one another in the trees.

“You see him?”

“No.”

“Wait. Here’s a trail. He went this way.”

They were tracking me, following the places where I’d broken through branches and brush or turned over leaves. They were coming on slowly, but they were coming on steadily all the same. Their voices sounded closer every minute.

I had to keep going, but I was tired. The agony of Waterman’s memory medicine . . . being trapped in the Panic Room . . . my escape from the bunker before it blew up . . . my tangle with Waylon and the guards . . . and then my run through the woods—all of it had worn me out. My legs felt weak. My energy was depleted. I knew I couldn’t keep running like this forever.

I straightened and looked around. These woods were deep. No sign of an exit. Without a firm sense of my direction, I might find myself circling around in them until nightfall. I knew there had to be a road here somewhere, but I had no clue where it was. I needed a place to hide, a place I could rest and gather my strength and get my bearings.

By listening to the voices and movements of the oncoming Homelanders, I could pretty much judge their location. I could tell they had spread out in a line—like a search party—in order to comb through the forest more efficiently. Instead of running away from them, I now began traveling across that line, hoping to get outside the reach of it. I had gone only a little ways when I found something—maybe just the hiding place I was looking for.

I came to a small stream. A little ways beyond it, a steep formation of rock and earth rose about thirty feet into the air. Its gray and brownish color blended with the gray and brownish colors of the surrounding forest— the naked winter trees and the dirt. I hadn’t even known the formation was there until I was practically right beneath it. I thought:
If I could get up on top of that,
the Homelanders might pass right under me without even
looking up. If they did look up and spot me, at least I could
fight them from high ground.

I paused at the stream, laid my gun aside, and knelt down to drink. The water was gritty and had a sour, coppery taste, but man oh man, I was grateful for the coolness of it in my hot, dry mouth, grateful for the sense of fresh strength flowing through me. When I’d had my fill, I stood up. I strapped the machine gun over my shoulder again. I stepped across the stream and attacked the rock.

It wasn’t an easy climb. It was hard to find places to grab hold of. I dug my fingers into the moist earth between the rocks. I dug the toes of my sneakers in wherever I could. My arms and legs felt weak, but once I was six feet off the ground, there was no turning back, and no letting go. I climbed hand over hand until the slope grew a little less steep. Then I scrambled the last several yards to the top.

Here, there was an outcropping of gray rock. I edged out onto it and lay down on my stomach. Now I had a good view of the forest below me.

The morning was wearing on. The mist was thinning. Sunlight had begun to pierce through the needles of the high pines and the empty branches of the winter maples. It fell in beams with the mist swirling inside them. The shadowy tangles of the forest depths came into sharper relief as the light grew stronger.