The Final Hour

CHAPTER NINE

I opened my eyes and it was all gone: the compound, the buildings, the guards, all of it. No, wait. There was still that hand. It was still gripping my shoulder.

I turned my head, confused. Yes, there it was-that hand-powerful fingers digging painfully into my flesh.

I lifted my eyes and found myself looking up into the sadistic face of Chuck Dunbar, the Yard King.

“Wake up, garbage,” he snarled.

Fear shot through my confusion, bringing me fully alert. Where was I? What was happening? I tried to think. I remembered…

The cafeteria. Dinner. The swastika boys. Their plan to escape.. .

I’d had another memory attack. I’d collapsed onto the floor in pain. That meant now I must be…

I looked around. Yes, I was in the infirmary. It was a narrow cinder-block rectangle of a room, the walls painted hospital green. There was a row of narrow cots lined up against one wall. There was a prisoner in each of two of the other cots. The rest were empty. There was an observation window on the far wall at the end of the room. The window was empty too: There was no one in the observation booth. The other sick prisoners had purposely turned their heads so they weren’t looking at me.

No one was looking at me. No one was watching. Which was exactly how Dunbar liked it.

The Yard King stood over my bed, gripping me hard by the shoulder. He sneered down at me, his eyes bright with malice.

“What do you want?” I asked. My voice was thick and muddy.

With his free hand, Dunbar reached down and grabbed the front of my shirt. He yanked me up off the mattress. He stuck his face in close to mine. I could smell his dinner on his breath. Dinner and beer.

“Why are you here?” he said in that raking-gravel voice of his. “Why are you in the infirmary?”

“What do you mean? What…?”

He shook me hard. I stopped talking. “Have you got some kind of problem? Did you get hurt somewhere?”

“No, I…”

“I wouldn’t like to think you got hurt in my yard, West,” Dunbar rasped. “I wouldn’t like to think you were telling people you got hurt in my Outbuilding.”

Now I understood. He was afraid I’d come here to talk, to inform on him, to tell someone how he’d roughed me up.

“Get your hands off me,” I said, grabbing at his wrist.

“Or you’ll do what?” asked Dunbar-but all the same, he threw me roughly back down onto the cot.

I rubbed my hand over my face, trying to get my bearings, trying to defog my mind. My thoughts still seemed to be drifting in some weird netherworld between the present and the past.

“Come on,” Dunbar said. “What did you tell them?”

“Listen…,” I began.

He hit me in the side of the head with his open hand.

“Don’t waste my time, West. Let’s go! What did you tell them?”

I looked up at that nasty, knuckly face. I didn’t like getting hit. I didn’t like that he could just whack me like that and get away with it. He was a bully, that’s all. A bully who knew he had all the power as long as we were here, as long as we were stuck together in the hell of Abingdon.

I couldn’t keep the scorn out of my voice. “I didn’t come here to turn you in, Dunbar.” Slowly, painfully, I sat up on the bed. “You don’t have to be such a coward…”

That got to him. The truth always gets to guys like him. He grabbed me again, twisting the front of my shirt in his fingers as he hauled me to my feet, held me close to his angry eyes. “You listen to me, West. You open your mouth one time-one time-and so help me, they will find your broken body…”

“I said, get off me!”

I was too angry to stop myself. I knocked his hand away again. I staggered backward as he let me go.

Dunbar looked surprised-surprised I dared to stand up to him, surprised that any prisoner would dare. But he smiled as I glared at him.

“Careful, West,” he said, very softly, very dangerously.

“Listen,” I told him. “The next time you have me in your lousy Outbuilding, with your guards waiting out in the yard to help you so I can’t fight back-then you can beat on me all you want. But you lay your hand on me in here again and so help me, you’ll be in the infirmary with me.”

The bully’s eyes widened in shock, then narrowed in rage. I was pretty sure no prisoner had ever talked to him like that before.

“Oh, you’re gonna be sorry you mouthed off to me, garbage,” he said. “Remember I told you I’m gonna make teaching you a lesson my hobby?”

“I remember.”

“Well, forget that. I’m gonna make it my profession. You think you have some kind of protection against me. You got no protection against me. When I decide to come for you, no one’ll see, no one’ll know, no one’ll say a word. You’ll just be gone.”

With that, he grinned-and turned to walk away.

I was glad to see him go. But before he reached the door, something happened.

It was like another memory attack-that harsh, that sudden, that real-but it only lasted a single second. One flash. One memory. That moment, out in the darkness, out in the shadows of the Homelander compound as I listened to the voices inside the building. I remembered Prince’s voice…

The Great Death!

“Dunbar!” I called out. The word sprang from my mouth before I even had time to think about it.

The Yard King stopped about two steps away from the infirmary door. Slowly, he turned back to face me.

“You say something, garbage?”

I was about to answer when there it was again. The flash of memory. The night. The compound. The voices inside. The images and words rushed in on me too quickly for me to understand them all. But one thought stood out from all the others like phrases written in fire in a paragraph of faded print.

The Great Death will not be stopped… It will ring in the devil’s New Year.

“I have to see the warden,” I said softly, more to myself than to Dunbar. “I have to talk to the warden right away, right now.”

Dunbar narrowed his eyes. He pointed a finger at me. “Just how short a life are you looking to have, you dumb-”

“No,” I said, “no, it’s not about you. It has nothing to do with you. Listen to me, Dunbar. Something terrible is going to happen.”

I stood and stared down at the floor as the thoughts, the images, the memories kept flashing around me, engulfing me.

The Great Death will not be stopped… Even if I have to do it on my own, the Great Death will not be stopped.

It was hard to think straight, but I knew I had to. I had to put the pieces together. Prince had escaped. Rose had told me that. Most of the Homelanders had been rounded up, but Prince and some of his accomplices were still at large.

Even if I have to do it on my own…

Rose’s bosses in Washington were wrong. Prince hadn’t left the country. The threat of the Homelanders wasn’t over. As long as Prince was alive, as long as he was free…

The Great Death will not be stopped.

He would somehow make sure the Great Death would happen. Whatever the Great Death was, Prince would see it through, even if he had to do it alone.

I had to tell someone, warn someone. But who could I tell? Who could I warn? How could I get the word out? In here. Stuck in here. Rose was gone. He said I wouldn’t be able to get in touch with him anymore. Who else would believe me? My parents-my friends-maybe even my lawyers-sure. But none of them had the power to stand in the way of the Homelanders’ plan.

The Great Death… will ring in the devil’s New Year.

New Year’s. It was right around the corner, a little more than a week away. Whatever Prince was planning, there wasn’t a lot of time to stop him. I had to think of something.

I raised my head slowly. I looked up at Dunbar. “I need to talk to the warden,” I said again. “You gotta tell him, Dunbar. You gotta let him know. There’s going to be a terrorist attack.”

“What?” said the Yard King, his rattling voice cracking with disbelief.

I stared up at him, hoping he could read the seriousness in my eyes, praying he’d believe me. “People are going to die, Dunbar. A lot of people. You have to get me to the warden. I have to tell him. I have to tell someone.”

Dunbar let out a harsh laugh. “Man, you are one crazy-”

The next moment I was on him. I didn’t think about it, I just leapt off the bed. One hand grabbed Dunbar’s shirt, the other was on his throat, curved into a claw around his Adam’s apple. I knocked him back against the wall and held him there, my eyes inches from his.

“Do it, Dunbar!”

He stared at me, his mouth open. “Are you out of your-”

“Do it,” I said. “Or so help me, I will turn you in for the things you do. Even if you kill me for it, Dunbar, I will turn you in and they will put you away. How do you think that’ll be, huh? How do think you’ll do in prison? How do you think the cons’ll treat you once you’re here on the inside?”

His eyes turned into deep pools of fear.

I clutched his throat tighter until he gagged.

“Get me to the warden!” I said. “Do it!”