The Truth Of The Matter Part 9

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, pus.h.i.+ng 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, flas.h.i.+ng 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 woodsa"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 linea"like a search partya"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 somethinga"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 foresta" 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 pa.s.s 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.

And there were the Homelanders. I could see four of them in a long, straggling line, moving slowly through the trees, their machine guns strapped to their shoulders and held at their sides. I could hear them talking to one another across the small distances between them, just the sound of their voices at first and then, as they got closer, their words.

"He was running fast. He must've gotten pretty far by now."

"He's gotta give out eventually. He can't just keep going and going."

"I don't know. He's a tough kid. Lot of determination."

"He gave Waylon a pop, that's for sure."

"Yeah, you don't see that too often."

"Well . . . Waylon will take it out of him when we finally catch him."

They came closer and closer. I got out of sight, lying low on the outcropping, pressing my face to the cold of the stone, feeling the cold of the mist swirling over me. Now, the gunmen's voices were practically right underneath me. When I peeked over the edge of the outcropping, I could clearly make out the faces of the two men nearest me.

"I tried to warn Waylon that explosion was coming . . ." It was the guard with the handlebar mustache, shaking his head ruefully as he scanned the woods. "Dude wouldn't listen."

The blond guard answered him with a nasty laugh. "Well, man, you should tell him that. You should just say to him, *Waylon, dude, I tried to warn you, but you were just too stupid to hear what I was saying.'"

The handlebar guy gave a heavy laugh in return. "Right, I should do that," he said. "Because my life just won't be complete until I have a bullet in my kneecap."

They pa.s.sed on, right by me. They never even looked up at the rock where I was lying. Soon, their voices were fading into the woods to my left. For now, at least, I was safe.

Weary, I rolled over onto my back. I stared up into the thinning mist that clung close to my face. With the danger having temporarily pa.s.sed, all the emotions of the last several hours washed over me. It wasn't a good feeling.

You got nowhere to go, West.

Blond Guy was right about that, wasn't he? For so long, it seemed, one idea had inspired me and kept me from giving up hope.

You're a better man than you know. Find Waterman.

Ever since that moment when I'd been arrested, when the police had been leading me to the patrol car to take me off to prison . . . ever since that moment when someone had somehow unlocked my cuffs and whispered those words in my ear, my one hope had been that I might find Waterman, that he might tell me the truth about what had happened to me.

Well, I'd found him, all right. And with the help of that drug the crow-faced woman had injected into my arm, I was beginning to remember the missing year of my life, beginning to get at that truth I'd wanted so badly. The reason I'd been convicted of Alex's murder . . . the way I'd fallen in with the Homelanders . . . I hadn't remembered all the details yet, but I could pretty well guess what they were. And Beth . . . my love for Beth . . . I knew it was there all along, but I'd forgotten it. How desperate I'd been to get that memory back againa"and now I had.

But what good did any of it do me? Waterman was dead. All his compatriots had vanished. If there was anyone left who could prove I wasn't really a killer, I didn't know who it was or where he was. Detective Rose and the rest of the police were still trying to arrest me for murder. The Homelanders were hot on my trail, guns at the ready. I still couldn't go home, couldn't go to my parents without putting them in danger. I couldn't go to see Beth. What good was the memory of loving her now?

I stared up into the mist, and I felt totally alone. I tried to pray. I did pray. At least I said the words, asking for guidance, asking for help. But my heart wasn't in it. I could feel myself holding back somehow, keeping my distance from G.o.d.

Somewhere in the Biblea"I couldn't remember where just thena"it says you're supposed to be happy about the hard things that happen to you, you're supposed to be grateful for the "trials" you go through because they test your faith and harden your endurance. Well, I definitely wasn't happya"or grateful. The truth is: I was angry, ticked off to the maximum. I was sick of trials, sick of being tested. I was eighteen, for crying out loud. I was supposed to be getting ready for college. I was supposed to be with my girl. I was supposed to be preparing for life. It wasn't fair that things should be so hard for me, so dangerous. It wasn't fair that there was no one to help me, that G.o.d wouldn't help me, that I was all alone. I wanted my life back, my ordinary life. I wanted to go home. It wasn't fair.

What am I supposed to do now? I asked G.o.d bitterly, thinking about that horrible scene in the bunker lounge, Waterman lying there in a pool of blood, dead. No one left to help me. No one left who knew I was innocent.

What am I supposed to do now?

And the answer came back to me: You got nowhere to go, West.

I let out a long, slow sigh. I rolled over and pushed up to my knees. I looked off into the woods and could just make out the four Homelander guards disappearing among the trees. The tendrils of mist curled around their vanis.h.i.+ng figures. The sunlight fell in beams behind them, lighting patches of the forest floor.

Exhausted, heartsore, I moved to the edge of the rock and went down until it became too steep to keep walking. Then, I slipped over the side. Digging my fingers into the outcropping, I reached down with my feet until I found some purchase in the earth and stone. I began the climb back to the forest floor.

Well, I thought, at least I'm safe for now. I suppose that's something. I suppose I ought to be grateful for that.

And just thena"just as I thought thata"I felt the pain flaring inside me againa"that pain brought on by the drug Waterman had given me.

I had time to think, Oh, no! Not now!

And then the attack came full force, the writhing flame of agony twisting inside me.

Crying out, I lost my hold on the rock. Suddenly, I was falling, falling, falling into darkness and memory.

CHAPTER SIXTEEN.

The Choice

It was different this time. I had nothing like that feeling I'd had before that I was leaving my body. I was just suddenly somewhere else. I wasn't even aware that it was a memory. I was completely therea"completely present in the past without any idea that I had fallen from the rock, that I was lying on the forest floor now, writhing in pain . . .

I was in school. I was sitting at my desk in English cla.s.s. Mrs. Smith was in front of the room, sitting on the edge of her desk holding a book. Mrs. Smith was one of my favorite teachers. She was a young woman with a very happy, upbeat personality, always smiling and joking and laughing with the students. She was a little on the round side, but I thought she was pretty all the same, with long blond hair and sort of an open face that always looked pleasantly surprised.

She was reading from the book in her soft voicea"a play by William Shakespeare: "*Between the acting of a dreadful thing / And the first motion, all the interim is / Like a phantasma, or a hideous dream . . .'"

The kids in the cla.s.sa"including my friends Josh and Milera"sat around me at their desks, listening. Most of thema"including Josh and Milera"looked pretty bored.

My desk was near the window. I turned away from Mrs. Smith and the others and looked out at the school grounds. There was a square of open gra.s.s surrounded by low buildings. It was lunch hour for the younger kids, and I could see some of them out on the kickball field and others studying at outdoor picnic tables and some just sitting together and talking, joking around. I watched them sadly.

Have you ever had to get through a day, smiling at people, talking, as if everything were normal and okay, while all the time you felt like you were carrying a leaden weight of unhappiness inside you? That's what it was like for me. I had been at this school now for three years. Before that, I had been at middle school for two years with most of the same kids. And before that, most of us had been together at elementary school. I could stroll across this campus from one end to the other and never be out of sight of a familiar face.

This school, these people, this towna"this was my life, my whole life. Sure, I always knew I'd leave it someday. I always figured there'd be college. I had a secret hope that maybe I could get into the Air Force, be a fighter pilot. I knew there'd come a time when life would take me other places.

But what was happening now, this was different. It was terrifying. And it was hugely sad.

I want you to understand completely what I'm asking of you. You'll be taken away from your family, your school, your friends, your girlfriend. They'll all believe you were convicted of murder. They'll believe you're a fugitive who's escaped from prison. They may even come to learn you've become a member of a group of terrorists . . . If it all goes wrong, we'll never admit we know you, we'll never tell anyone the truth. Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.

That's what Waterman had said to me that first night we'd driven around the hills in his limousine.

Since then, there had been other nights. Waterman and I had met by the reservoir again and again. He and his drivera"the man I came to know as Dodger Jima"had driven me to what they called a safe house: a cabin hidden in the woods. Waterman had shown me videos there on a laptop, videos of the Homelanders. As I watched the vids, he explained who they were, what they'd done.

He'd shown me their leader, who called himself Prince. He was a Saudi Arabian terrorist who'd blown up buildings in Britain and Israel. In Tel Aviv, he'd planted a bomb in a school, killing twenty-seven little children. Now he was here, recruiting Americans to act as his proxies in his war against the West and against our liberty.

Then there was one of Prince's top lieutenants. He called himself Waylon. He was an Iranian. He'd helped kill American and British soldiers in Iraq. When he was finished there, he'd gone after civilian targets, kidnapping and killing journalists and Western aid workers in Afghanistan. He liked to torture people and kill them slowly and then send the videos to their families. Waterman showed me some of those pictures too.

And he showed me other things. Snapshots of Waylon meeting with Mr. Sherman, my history teacher. Intercepted e-mails in which Sherman told Waylon about how he was recruiting my friend Alex to join their team . . .

These were the people who had come to America to fight against us. Every night we met he showed me more videos, gave me more of their literature to read, literature full of hatreda"hatred of Americans, Britons, and Jewsa"hatred of liberty, which they called a tool of the devila"hatred of anyone who disagreed with or opposed them.

And every night we met, Waterman asked me again: Would I join with him in fighting them? Would I give up my home, my friends, my girl, my life to try to stop them?

Now here I was, back in school on what was supposed to be an ordinary day, trying to pretend that everything was normal, while those words of his weighed on me and turned everything into suspense and sadness: If it all goes wrong, we'll never admit we know you, we'll never tell anyone the truth. Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.

"*The Genius and the mortal instruments / Are then in council,' " Mrs. Smith read on. "*And the state of man, / Like to a little kingdom, suffers then / The nature of an insurrection.'"

Right, I thought. That was me: my mind and my heart fighting with each other. Or my "genius" and my "mortal instruments." Or, like, whatever. The point is, I didn't know what to do.

I looked at Mrs. Smith and I felt a lump in my throat as if any moment I might just break down crying. How could I say yes to Waterman and just let this life of mine disappear, break the hearts of the people who loved me, say good-bye, maybe forever, to my parents, my lifelong friends, the people I loved?

And Beth . . .

The bell rang.

Mrs. Smith snapped the book shut. "Read this scene again at home and we'll talk about it tomorrow," she said.

I just sat there, not moving, staring at her, wondering if I'd even be here tomorrow, wondering if I'd ever be herea"or see any of these peoplea"again.

"Hey! Ho! I know it's poetry, mana"but wake up." It was Josh, slapping at my shoulder. I looked up at him. Josh was kind of a geeka"kind of the Ur-Geek, actuallya" the Geek on whom all other geeks were modeled: short, narrow with hunched-up shoulders. Short curly hair and thick gla.s.ses and a nervous smile. "It's time for some of us to have lunch and others of us to gaze stupidly into our girlfriend's eyes while little heart-shaped bubbles come blipping out of our ears and nostrils."

"You make it sound so romantic," said Miler Miles beside him. "Or maybe disgusting is the word I want." Miler was a track star: small, lean, with short blond hair and green, go-get-'em CEO-of-the-future eyes.

I went on sitting there, just sort of gazing up at them stupidly. My buddies. They'd been snarking like this at each other for years now. Josh's geekiness could push the needle on the annoying meter into the red sometimes, but he was really smart and we all liked him anyway. And Milera"he was just a regular guy now, but he practically had "I will be a gazillionaire businessman one day" flas.h.i.+ng in big lights over his head.

What would it be like never to see them again? Not just because we'd gone off to college where we could communicate online and meet up on vacations and so on. But never to see your best friends again at all? Or talk to them at all? Or even be able to tell them the truth about yourself? To tell them you weren't the bad guy you were supposed to be?

Everyone who loves you will go to his grave believing you betrayed your country.

"Uh, h.e.l.lo? Earth to Stars.h.i.+p Charlie," Josh said.

I blinked. I realized I'd been sitting there staring at them. I tried to think of something funny to saya"something that sounded normal. "Oh, sorry. What you were saying was so interesting I guess I dozed off."

It was lame, but it was the best I could come up with. I gathered my books and shoved them into my backpack. Slung the backpack over my arm as I got up and joined Josh and Miler.

"It's hard to communicate when you're wrapped in a cloud of loooove," said Josh, singing the last word as if it were opera.

"Or maybe it's just hard to communicate with a member of a subhuman species who can't get within ten feet of a girl without melting into a pile of quivering mucus," Miler said.

"How can you tell when Josh melts into a pile of quivering mucus?" I asked. "I mean, what's the difference?"

"Good question," said Miler.

"Har har," said Josh, but he smiled nervously becausea"well, because he always smiled nervously.

Miler and I b.u.mped fists and laughed. My heart felt as if it were made of lead.

The three of us walked outside into the crisp, cool air. We strolled together across the gra.s.s toward the cafeteria, nodding or waving every three steps or so at someone we knew.

I heard Waterman speaking again: We want to rush the case to trial as quickly as we can and basically railroad you into prison for murder.

Prison, I thought. What would it be like to be in prison for murder? Would they be able to protect me from the real murderers all around me or would I be on my own? I could just imagine my mother coming to see me on visiting day . . .