The Final Hour

CHAPTER TWENTY-ONE

When I woke up, the rain had stopped. It was almost dusk.

Blinking, confused, I sat up on the Jeep’s passenger seat. I looked out through the windshield.

A long highway ran before us through grassy hills to a darkening sky. There were a few cars and trucks ahead of us and behind us, but not many. Traffic was light and we were moving quickly. There were still lots of clouds in the sky, but they were drifting apart now. Patches of blue and rays of slanting sunlight were appearing between them. There was nothing left of the great storm.

For a dazed moment, I couldn’t remember where I was or how I had gotten here. Then the violence of the storm-the rain, the lightning, the thunder-and the danger of the day-the mad escape, the guards, the prisoners, the cops-slowly came back to me, broken pieces that fit themselves together inside my head like some kind of automated jigsaw.

I turned and saw Mike behind the wheel. I remembered how he had come to find me in the middle of nowhere, in the middle of the rain.

Mike glanced over at me, his faint ironic smile hidden by the big black mustache. “Rise and shine, chucklehead,” he said.

My mouth was dry. I swallowed hard. “Mike… I remember…”

He turned serious right away. “Remember what?”

“Everything,” I said slowly. “Or most of it…” It was still like a dream, still putting itself together out of half-remembered fragments. “I was in the Homelander compound. I snuck out of my room in the middle of the night. I was eavesdropping outside a barracks, trying to hear Prince’s plans. That’s when they caught me, strapped me to that chair. They had a couple of their goons torture me for information, to find out who I was working for…” I looked over at Mike as the whole memory came to me. He looked out the windshield at the road, his face expressionless, his thoughts impossible to read. “I knew I couldn’t stand the pain forever. I was going to tell them-about Waterman and the others, our plan to stop them. So I cracked the implant Waterman had had put inside my mouth. It released a drug that erased my memory, everything about the year before. Maybe I shouldn’t have done it, but the pain was terrible and I just didn’t think…”

“No, no, that was smart,” said Mike. “That was the right thing to do.”

“Maybe if I had toughed it out, maybe if I’d been stronger…”

“Don’t be a chucklehead, chucklehead,” he said. “No one can stand up to that kind of pain forever. Not Chuck Norris, not John Wayne, not me, not you, not anyone. You did the only thing you could do. You erased the information so they couldn’t get at it. That’s why Waterman gave you that stuff to begin with. He understood.”

Slowly, I nodded. If anyone knew about being tough, Mike was the guy. Never mind Chuck Norris and John Wayne. If Mike said he couldn’t stand it, then I guess no one could.

“So that’s the story,” I said. “That’s why it seemed like I went to sleep in my own bed one night and then woke up being tortured, wanted by the police, all that. I’d destroyed my own memory to keep from giving up my friends. But now it’s back. My memory, my life-it’s back. I remember everything right up until the moment they caught me. And I remember something else too.”

Mike glanced at me again, lifting one black eyebrow in a question.

“Prince said the Great Death would ring in the devil’s New Year,” I told him. “And then he said it would be ‘right there, right where we hit them so hard before.’”

“What’s that mean? The World Trade Center? New York City?”

“New York, yeah. At least I think so…” Something teased the corner of my memory, but I couldn’t quite reach it. “I’m almost sure.”

“New York at New Year’s,” Mike murmured. “With, like, a billion people in Times Square waiting for the ball to drop.”

I looked out the window at the peaceful hills in the gray twilight. My stomach clutched with fear. So many people all together in one place.

“Tomorrow night,” I said. “One day away.”

“Well…,” Mike said. “At least there’ll be a whole lot of security around New York on New Year’s Eve.”

I shook my head. “I think that’s what Prince started with. That’s what they were doing the whole time we were in training. Planting Homelanders-native-born Americans-in places that would help them infiltrate all that security. Maybe they’re even part of the security system itself. That’s why Prince sounded so sure of himself. That’s what he had up his sleeve all along.”

Mike made no response. He only said, “There’s our exit.”

He guided the Jeep off the highway to the ramp. We came to a little town in the middle of nowhere, surrounded by hills. We passed a small strip of gas stations and restaurants. Then we left the town behind. We were on a small lane winding more deeply into the rolling grasslands. As the car meandered into nowhere, the last light of day faded into night.

The last night before the New Year, before the Great Death.

We were on a lonely road, not a light anywhere. I turned to Mike. I could only just make out his steady features in the green glow from the dashboard.

“Where are we going?” I asked him.

“We’re almost there,” he said.

“But…”

“After you told me you were going to join the prisoners in their escape, I contacted every special ops guy I knew, every undercover source I had. I sent out the word through every network I have that I needed to get in touch with Rose.”

“Rose? Did you? Did you get in touch with him?”

“No,” Mike said. “I didn’t have to. Rose got in touch with me.” He glanced over at me. “He sent me to find you. They still need you, chucklehead.”

He lifted his chin toward the windshield. I turned and followed his gesture.

We had come off the road now. We were bumping down a dirt lane. Up ahead, in the glow of the headlights, I could see an empty field, the grass cut low. In the middle of the field there was a grassless strip of hard-packed dirt. It was a landing strip. A small Cessna airplane was sitting at one end of it.

And Rose was leaning against the fuselage, waiting for us.