The truth of the matter

PART III
CHAPTER EIGHTEEN

Handlebar and Blond Guy Slowly, I lifted my head. It felt like trying to lift a block of cement. I groaned as a bolt of pain shot through me, right behind my eyes. I could feel the drying, sticky blood stiffening on the side of my face. I tried to move. My hands were caught behind me. Curling my fingers around I could feel the duct tape wrapped around my wrists, holding my arms in place.

I gave a start as it all came back to me. The Homelanders surrounding me. Waylon kicking me…

“Take it easy, punk. Unless you want to get hit again.”

I turned to my left. It was the blond guard who’d spoken-the one M-2 had blasted in the forest. The burn mark was still there, right in the center of his forehead. I remembered how his eyes had looked angry and mean on the bunker monitor. It was worse up close like this. Up close, his eyes were fiery pools of rage and cruelty.

I was in the backseat of a car, a midsize sedan. We were climbing up a winding, narrow road along what looked like the side of a mountain. There was forest rising at one window: green pine trees interspersed with winter-gray oaks and maples. At the other window, there was nothing but open space as if we were on the edge of a sharp drop.

I was sitting in the middle of the seat. The blond guard was to my left, the guard with the handlebar mustache was to my right. Up in front, the stocky guard-the one M-2 had taken out by the bunker entrance-was driving. Through the windshield, I could see another car on the road up ahead. I guessed the rest of the Homelanders were in there, including Waylon himself.

There was a squawk of static. The driver spoke into his shoulder mike.

“He’s awake.”

A voice-Waylon’s thick guttural accented voice-came back at once: “If he tries anything, bust him up. And I mean anything.”

Suddenly, there was a knife pressed to the side of my face. It was a wicked-looking dagger, the blade thick and sharp. The metal was cold against my bloodied skin, and the sharp edge dug into me. I couldn’t move my head without getting cut. I could only shift my eyes toward the guard with the handlebar. He was the one holding the knife.

“You hear that, tough guy? If you try anything, we’re gonna start cutting off pieces of you and feeding them to the squirrels out there.”

I didn’t answer. He pressed the blade against me even harder-so hard I thought it would slice into me.

“You hear me?”

“I hear you,” I said.

With that, he pulled the knife away. I watched as he pushed his khaki jacket open and slipped the blade into a holster on his belt.

The car continued to climb. I rocked back and forth as we went quickly around one curve and then switch-backed into another.

“Where are we going?” I said.

“Shut up,” said Handlebar.

“I’m just asking,” I said. I didn’t want him to think I was intimidated by him. I was intimidated by him, but I didn’t want him to think so.

“We’re going to a place where no one can hear you scream,” said the blond guard with vicious pleasure. “You’re gonna be doing a lot of screaming and we don’t want to disturb the neighbors.”

“Hey, knock off the conversation,” said Handlebar.

“I’m just saying,” said the blond guy, smirking. “I’m just giving him a little preview of what happens next.”

For a couple of minutes after that, I kept silent. I was thinking-or trying to think. It isn’t easy to stay focused when you’re scared out of your wits. But I was thinking: the last time I was in the clutches of these jokers, they were torturing me. Now it sounded as if they were planning to torture me again. So the question was: Why? Why take the time to rough me up? Why didn’t they just kill me the way they’d killed Waterman? They must be after information. But what was it they thought I knew?

I tried to go into my memory to get at the answer, but the pathways into the past seemed to still be blocked. Despite my memory attacks, my brain seemed to be giving up its information bit by bit at its own pace. There was something, though. Something I’d heard more recently, something I hadn’t been paying attention to at the time…

The car turned hard as we hit another sharp switchback in the road. I didn’t have a seat belt on and I was forced over until my shoulder pressed into Handlebar. At the window for a moment, there was nothing visible but blue sky.

Then the car straightened and we continued our racing climb up the mountain. I had to shift in my seat to sit upright. Handlebar gave me an irritated push, helping me along.

I decided to start talking again, see if I could get some hints about what the Homelanders were after. I had to try anything I could to get out of this and with my hands tied, I didn’t have a lot of options.

“So what’re you guys, sadists or something?” I asked- I tried to put a sneer in my voice as I said it. I thought maybe if I could taunt them a little, I could make them angry enough to answer. “What, do you just torture people for the fun of it?”

“I thought I told you to shut up,” said Handlebar darkly.

“Hey, I’m just making conversation. You know, to pass the time during the drive. Otherwise I’ll have to start singing ‘99 Bottles of Beer on the Wall.’”

“You do, and I’ll cut your throat.”

I smiled. It wasn’t easy: I didn’t feel much like smiling. Plus my face hurt, and smiling didn’t help it any. “You’re not gonna cut my throat,” I said with more confidence than I felt.

Handlebar pushed back the side of his jacket to show me the knife in its holster again. “Oh no?”

I manufactured another sneer. “No. It’s like your friend over there said, you’re taking me somewhere to work me over. That means you want to know something. Unless you’re just one of those weirdos who likes beating up on people…”

Handlebar turned away, refusing to answer, but the blond guy said, “I’ll like it. I’ll like doing it to you. I owe you for blasting me with that gizmo. So yeah, I’ll enjoy making you talk. And you will talk, believe me.”

“Wow,” I said. “You’re a real tough guy when you’re surrounded by friends with guns.”

Blond Guy’s eyes flashed and he drew back his fist as if to hammer me.

But Handlebar shut him down. “That’s enough,” he said. “Now shut up, both of you.” He seemed to have kind of a limited vocabulary.

Blond Guy lowered his fist. I went back to thinking. I was right, I thought, they did want information. But what?

And now I remembered… Something Waylon had said to me just before the bunker had blown up. I had been so keyed up waiting for the explosion that I’d barely noticed it at the time. Then, afterward, focused on my effort to escape, I’d forgotten all about it.

It was something Waylon said when he was taunting me. 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.

It’s always amazing to me how just when things seem to be impossibly bad, impossibly dark, some distant light shines through, some little handhold you can grab to keep from going completely under. Here I was, helpless, tied up, being spirited away to some place where these clowns were planning to torture me to death, and suddenly I realized: Waterman and his crew weren’t the only ones, after all. There must be someone else who knows my mission, someone who can help me and clear my name.

For a moment or two, I racked my brain, trying to think of who it might be, but the name just wasn’t there. It wasn’t there yet anyway. If the drug Waterman gave me kept doing its trick, if I kept having these memory attacks, eventually the whole story would come back to me- maybe even including the name of my ally.

The car continued its winding climb up the mountainside. No other cars passed us. No other cars came up behind. We must’ve been pretty far from civilization at this point. There didn’t seem to be anyone else around.

I wondered how long it would take us to reach our destination, how much time I had before they started to work on me.

I turned to Handlebar. “You know what your problem is?” I said.

His face contorted with anger. “I thought I told you…”

“To shut up, yeah, I know.”

“Well, do it then.”

“You’re not much of a conversationalist, are you?”

He only snorted at that.

“All right, never mind. If you don’t want to know, I won’t tell you. You’ll go to your grave never knowing what’s wrong with you.”

Handlebar laughed. It wasn’t a nice laugh. “Man, you are really something, aren’t you? You are really asking for it.”

I was. I knew I was making these guys angrier and angrier. But if I got them angry enough maybe they’d make a mistake, blurt something out. Sure, maybe they’d kill me too. But what other choice did I have? I wasn’t going to just sit there and wait for them to start cutting me up.

“Your problem is you’re stupid,” I told him.

The way Handlebar bared his teeth, I thought he was going to take a bite out of me.

“Hey, I mean that in the nicest possible way,” I told him. “I mean, I’m just trying to be helpful here.”

“Is that right?” he said through his bared, gritted teeth.

“Yeah. Really. See, you guys think I’m some sort of traitor to the cause or something, right? You think if you torture me, I’ll tell you the names of all the other traitors… or something like that anyway.”

“And?” said Handlebar-I’d hooked him now. He was actually interested in what I was saying.

“Well, the thing is, maybe I am a traitor. Maybe there are all kinds of people infiltrating your organization every which way. But it doesn’t matter.”

“Oh no? Why’s that?”

“Because I can’t remember, you knucklehead. I can’t remember anything that happened for the last year.”

At that, Handlebar’s eyes shifted. Interesting: he was looking across me at Blond Guy, as if they were sharing some sort of information between them.

“You already know that, don’t you?” I said. It was a guess, but I could tell by the look on Handlebar’s face that I was right. They already knew all about my amnesia. Of course they did. I had told Mr. Sherman about it. And these were probably the guys who had found Sherman where I’d left him in the haunted mansion. These were the guys who had tortured and killed him there. They would have made sure he told them everything he knew before he died.

I could see some of this playing out in Handlebar’s eyes and I said, “That’s right. Sherman was telling you the truth. I don’t remember anything.”

Handlebar started at that. He didn’t like me reading his mind. He said, “Sherman told us what you told him. That doesn’t make it the truth. I mean, if you’re not a traitor, what were you doing with Waterman?”

“Good question. I was with Waterman because he shot me up with a drug and carted me off to his underground playroom where-guess what?-he was trying to get information out of me too.”

I could see Handlebar working that over in his none-too-bright brain.

“I couldn’t help him anymore than I can help you,” I said. “Because I don’t remember anything. Am I a traitor to your cause? Man, I don’t even know what your cause is. Waterman said you were Islamic extremists. Maybe that guy Waylon is, but you guys…”

It was Blond Guy who answered me, his voice full of bitterness. “We just want a little fairness in this world, that’s all.”

“Fairness,” I said, trying to draw him out. “Sure. Who doesn’t want fairness? I mean, like, it’s no good that other people have stuff you don’t.”

Blond Guy’s whole face contorted with anger. “That’s right,” he said. “It’s not. People like Waterman, they’re always talking about freedom, about liberty. Big words. But when people are free, they don’t do what’s right. The way the world works: just because some guy knows somebody or gets born with rich parents or something, he gets all the breaks.”

“Right, right,” I said. I looked Blond Guy over. With his long, rangy body he looked like some kind of athlete. A basketball player maybe, or a runner. “Like, one guy has connections and makes the team; another guy gets cut.”

“That’s right,” he said heatedly. “That’s it exactly. There’s no fairness anywhere. People are just totally corrupt.”

“But you guys are gonna change all that, huh,” I said. “You’re going to make people be good.”

“That’s right,” said Blond Guy heavily.

“Sure,” I said. “Only the problem is, if you make someone good, he isn’t really good, is he? He didn’t choose to be good. He’s just a slave, doing what you tell him…”

Blond Guy was about to answer, but Handlebar reached around with one massive hand and grabbed me by the throat. I think if he hadn’t been afraid of Waylon, he’d’ve choked me to death right then and there. But he only clutched at me for a second, while I gagged helplessly. Then he pushed me away so that I fell against Blond Guy-who pushed me right back.

“Now will you shut up?” said Handlebar.

I swallowed hard, trying to get rid of the pain in my throat. “Sure,” I said finally. “Sure. I’m just trying to tell you: You can torture me all day long, it won’t get you anywhere. I just don’t remember.”

“You’ll remember,” said Blond Guy darkly. “We’ll make you remember.”

Handlebar just turned away again and looked out the window sullenly.

I looked out too. I could see a view of mountains beyond the edge of the road, a rolling sea of blue-green conifers and brown-gray hardwoods stretching out into the distance. I thought again about how lonely it was up here. Far from anywhere, far from anyone. There was no one around who could help me.

And then, all of a sudden-maybe there was.

I think I was the first one to hear it-and I didn’t believe my own ears right away. We seemed to be so far from civilization, so far from anything, that what I thought I was hearing didn’t make sense, didn’t fit in.

But a second later, Handlebar stiffened in the seat next to me.

“You hear that?” he said.

Blond Guy listened. He shook his head. But then he said, “Oh, wait…”

Then the driver chimed in, “Hey, you hear that?”

And we all sat silently another second, listening.

There was a siren. Far in the distance. But closing on us, closing fast. Whatever it was, it was traveling at high speed over the winding, climbing road behind us.

Excitement woke up in me. It felt like a bird fluttering to life in my chest. Maybe it was the police. Maybe they knew about us. Maybe they were coming to rescue me. All right, that meant I’d get arrested, but getting arrested sounded a whole lot better than being tortured to death…

“Could just be an ambulance or something,” said Blond Guy.

There was another crackle of static. The driver spoke into his shoulder mike again. “We hear a siren.”

Waylon’s voice came back at once. “Yes, I hear it too. You see anything coming up behind you?”

The driver checked his rearview mirror. I saw his worried eyes reflected there. “Nothing,” he said into the mike. “The road winds around too much. I don’t have much of a view.”

A pause. The siren grew louder. It was unmistakable now.

Then static-and Waylon’s voice: “We’re going to go on ahead. Stay behind until you have a visual, then call.”

“Great,” muttered the blond guy.

“Shut up,” said Handlebar, his all-purpose response.

I looked ahead through the windshield. For a moment I saw the rear fender of the green car ahead of us-Waylon’s car. Then the green car started speeding up, pulling away. Another second or two and it was gone around the next bend in the road, out of sight.

Good old Waylon. He was running for it. He was leaving his henchmen behind to deal with whatever was coming up in back of us. Nice guy.

So we were alone in the sedan now. Everything was tension and silence-silence and listening. The siren grew louder and louder behind us. I squirmed around, looking back over my shoulder through the rear window. But the driver was right: the road was so twisty, there wasn’t much of it visible.

The driver must have been thinking the same thing. He let out a curse. “It’ll be right on top of us before we can see it.”

“Just keep driving,” Handlebar ordered. “It may be nothing. An ambulance, a fire truck. Even if it’s the cops, they may not be after us. How would they even know we were here?”

It was a good question. Would Waterman have called the police? I didn’t think so. His organization was so secret even the cops didn’t know it existed. The hope fluttering in my chest began to fall off a little. Maybe Handlebar was right. Maybe it was just an ambulance or something, something that had nothing to do with us.

But all the while, the siren grew louder.

The sedan pulled around another bend in the road. I strained to look behind me, but nothing was there.

And then, with startling quickness, there it was: a police car pulled into view, its sirens wailing, its red and blue lights whirling, flashing.

The sedan exploded with noise. The siren. The cursing of the guards on either side of me. The driver shouting into his microphone, his voice high with panic.

“It’s a cop!”

And Waylon’s guttural shout coming back over the speaker at once:

“Lose him!”

At that, the driver hit the gas.