Eleven Twenty-Three (49 page)

There’s something not right about this.

Mitsuko shimmies out of the bed of the truck.
She tightens her shoe laces.

“Mitsuko, whatever resistance the townspeople
just put up has been dealt with,” I say. “The soldiers will be
coming back any second. You’ve got to—”

“All the more reason to go now,” she
interrupts.

She slides out of the truck onto the
ground.

“Mitsuko, don’t leave us—” Julie begins,
tearing a hole in the plastic trash bag to see out of. “I thought
we were in this together.”

“’
In this together?
’ Jesus Christ,
Julie. What are you, twelve years old?”

“You said you wanted to
join
us, not
hitch a ride with us and bail in typical Mitsuko fashion,” Tara
says.

“If you were smart, you’d be coming with me,”
she says, and pulls her hair into a sloppy pony tail. “I’ve got
plans of my own. Either come with me now or suffer the
consequences. No? Then good luck, assholes. I’m out.”

And just like that, she clambers off into the
night. Gone.

“She’s dead,” I whisper. “It’s not that
easy.”

But it’s quiet in the encampment. No alerts.
No searchlights. No machine gun fire. It would appear as if she
simply slipped away completely unnoticed, bound for the media
circus only two miles away.

“Should we go too?” I finally ask. “Maybe it
is
that easy.”

The only response is the cocking of a large
gun.

“Get out of the truck.”

I squint my eyes and try to get a look at the
soldier a few feet away, at his face. He’s obscured by the glare of
a floodlight suspended from a nearby pine tree. All I can see
clearly is the gleam of steel pointed in our direction. I notice
that he is not a ghost. None of the soldiers are.

“Look—we’re—we’re sorry,” I stammer, raising
my hands. “Please don’t shoot.”

“Get out of the truck, I said.”

I slip my feet out from the blanket I was
mummified in and slowly lower them to the ground. I stand up on
wobbly legs. The girls don’t move.

“
Everyone
get out,” he barks, his
accent vaguely Southern. “Do not even
attempt
to fuck with
me. Everyone get out of the truck
now
.”

The girls start squirming from the bed.
Julie’s crying. Tara doesn’t seem to feel anything, and joins us
with a wholly blank expression on her face. When we make brief eye
contact, she shrugs as if this sort of thing just happens.

“Do you see this briefcase?” I ask lamely,
holding it up for him to inspect. “Don’t you know who I am?”

“Yeah, I do,” he says, using one free hand to
feel around for his radio.

I sigh with utter relief.

“I know who you are,” he says again. “You’re
the soon-to-be-dead asshole with the briefcase attached to his
wrist, right?”

He holds the walkie-talkie up to his mouth
and hits the TRANSMIT button.

I swallow just as the first ghost screams the
magic word.

“
Terrorist!”

The timing of our plan must have been more
accurate than anything had ever been accurate our entire lives.

Hajime would have watched the Humvee pull
away from Tara’s house, make a couple of final stops so the troops
could scoop up the last of the bodies on Flint Street, and turn
right out of the neighborhood. Then he would have run outside and
gotten into the BMW, peeling off the curb and driving frantically
toward the northern edge of town.

Once there, after seeing the carrier rumble
past the barricade line and the frantic townspeople through a set
of high-power binoculars, Hajime would have had to grab one of the
surgical masks from the back seat, put it on, and move to the
trunk. He would’ve poured the jugs of ammonia and hydrogen
chloroxide and bleach into the large plastic tub, filling it to the
brim. Then he would have doused the interior of the car as well.
The noxious stench, even through the mask, must have been
overwhelming. The fumes would have caused irreparable damage to his
eye.

He ignored the pain and finished the job.

Finally, he would have gotten back into this
chemical toilet of a car and started it up. He had to drive almost
another hundred yards, gagging and involuntarily weeping from the
ammonia. Next, he pulled up to the designated start-up point on the
county road that leads out of town, mile marker 358. It was no
accident Layne chose this spot: it was the same place Hajime once
saw what he swears was a large man-like creature poking around the
bushes. It reeked of cabbage and went jogging off into the woods as
Hajime drove by. The seventeen-year old Asian boy was terrified,
and regaled anyone who would listen thereafter with his tale of the
beast. Layne knew Hajime would remember this location.

He had to leave the car running as he reached
around to the back seat and retrieved the brick. The brick was then
wedged between the seat and gas pedal. Hajime would have backed up
and taken a deep breath. He must have thrown the car into Drive and
shimmied out the door, probably hitting the asphalt with a sharp
smack and retching from the ammonia deep in his lungs.

I can only imagine what the first Lilly’s End
resident must have seen: one moment they’re recoiling from manic
bursts of machine gun fire from the soldiers on one side of the
barrier. The next, they’re facing the headlights of a white BMW
careening toward them from inside their own town. Not far behind
it, cheering and shouting obscenities, is a young college-age
foreigner who has somehow infiltrated their dying community.

Then they would have smelled it: the ammonia,
the bleach, the disinfectants and powders and chlorine. They’d ask
themselves why anyone would load a luxury car down with chemicals
such as these.

That’s when the alarms would have gone off in
their heads.

These were the same chemicals everyone was
warned to avoid under the kitchen counter as children. It was what
homemade bombs were concocted from, right? And wasn’t this the same
odor that was detected outside all those American embassies just
before the blasts?

This was Oklahoma City; the Twin Towers; the
Pentagon; and the impetus behind all those Warning Level Oranges on
CNN. This was vindication for the man breathing on the other end of
their phone and perfect justification for every otherwise
questionable action ever taken by our government. Quite simply,
this car full of household cleaners was a direct attack on
Freedom.

Right now, Hajime Miriyama was the terrorist.
But what none of the future cover-ups realized was that, once
they’re all dead and the past is properly edited and stamped with
red ink, he’ll be the hero.

The soldier turns toward the screams, but
doesn’t take the AK-47’s barrel off of us. I’m already slipping my
hand underneath my shirt, reaching for the bottom of the revolver
taped to my chest.

Back at the barricade line, slightly drowned
out by the collective panic and confusion, the BMW plows into
something, probably one of the military jeeps parked not far from
the barriers. The soldiers on the scene open fire on the car and
hopefully not on Hajime. Even from here, I can faintly detect the
chemical smells carried over by the sea breeze. Down at the crash
site, the fumes must be overpowering, prompting instant chaos among
the survivors.

Everything suddenly becomes language. There’s
shouting in Japanese; excited bemusement in German; arguing in
Arabic; and incoherent pleading in English.

This is our only chance.

The soldier lowers the muzzle ever so
slightly and speaks into his walkie-talkie.

An image of Hajime darting through the woods
back toward his party on Golding Street is the last thing I
envision before tearing the gun out from under my shirt and taking
aim.

He immediately sees what I’ve done and drops
the radio.

I pull back the hammer on the revolver, my
line of site obscured by the duct tape hanging limply from the
chamber.

I’m staring into the barrel of the AK-47,
awaiting the blast.

My finger squeezes the trigger.

The soldier’s neck explodes.

He only lets out two or three rounds before
dropping the AK-47. Julie emits a muffled yelp like a kicked puppy
and hunches over, squeezing her left hand. The MOPP grabs at his
throat, which sprays blood in an arc. It glimmers in the
floodlights. Not taking any chances, I fire the last two bullets.
One misses completely, but the other smashes through his oxygen
mask and obliterates the face inside.

I turn to Julie.

“You okay, Jules?”

She holds her left hand up into the light.
Her ring finger is now the same length as her pinky.

“He shot half of my god damned
finger
off,” she squeals. “Holy
shit
, it hurts even worse than I
thought it would.”

“Can you manage?” I ask. “The others are
going to be onto the gunshots in a minute, so we don’t have time
to—”

“Yes, yes, I’m fine,” she says. “Let’s just
get rid of this body and get the hell out of here, okay? Forget my
finger. We’ll deal with it later.”

It takes all three of us to pick up the
corpse and toss it into the back of the truck with the townspeople.
We cover it with the blanket I was hidden in. Then I throw the gun
that killed him, along with Adam Something-Or-Other and Mr. Dawson,
in as well.

“Say goodbye to Lilly’s End, ladies,” I
mutter, picking up the AK-47.

We slip into the tight space between military
tents and make or way toward the forest that borders the northern
edge of town. It doesn’t take long for the grunts to figure out the
true purpose of the terrorist attack, and less than a minute after
we flee the scene, alarms sound. The motion activated floodlights
shudder to life. There’s terrifying commotion emanating from every
corner of the compound.

Flittering shadows from all sides cause us to
stop often and figure out our next move, which is always to simply
continue being alive.

The girls follow me between rows of tents.
Two or three troops at a time scramble past the shelters, searching
for the escapees. Julie takes short panicked breaths, petrified of
anything that doesn’t involve her own movement. She clutches her
left hand, which keeps leaking blood. Tara keeps a watchful eye on
the activity around us, motioning when it’s safe to cross the gaps
between tents.

Finally, we come to a halt at what appears to
be the end of the line. We face a huge open field of neck-high
palmettos. Beyond that, pine trees and thick ancient oaks clutch at
the night. There’s a glow coming from off in the far distance past
the forest, probably from the media circus. A helicopter approaches
from the southwest, over the St. John’s River, and a moment later,
floats above the palmettos. A searchlight shines down into the
brush. The chopper makes its way over the field and around the
periphery of the woods. Then it circles back.

“Oh my god…” Julie crouches down and places
her head between her knees, trying not to throw up. “We’re seven
degrees of fucked here, you guys.”

“We’re going to make it,” I promise, but in
my head I’m making promises to the Equation, should it intervene
and help us escape death tonight. “Let’s just wait for the
helicopter to—”

That’s when I hear the dogs barking. I never
complete my sentence and instead focus on the little gray girl
standing in front of the palmetto field, beckoning me to follow
her. I do, but just as I get close little Lillian Tyson slides into
the foliage, leaving me adrift in a sea of gray shadows.

06:58:24 PM

The palmettos grin at us like patiently
waiting beasts in the shadows of a third-world jungle.

We break into a full sprint away from the
military camp and plow into the brush. The dogs bark louder
somewhere behind us. There are at least three of them. The chopper
passes low over the field, just missing Tara’s head with its
searchlight. It continues over the forest and cuts right, toward
the ocean.

I glance over at Julie, who keeps pace
alongside me. She catches my eyes and returns a look of absolute
terror. Tara gets caught up in one of the palmetto plants and lags
behind. Julie goes back for her. I inspect the encampment.
Amazingly, none of the soldiers have pursued us on foot, and I
don’t see a single human being anywhere near the perimeter.

If I considered this turn of events for even
a fraction of a second, I’d realize that nothing is right about any
of it. It’s as if everything we’re doing was somehow part of their
plan, and that they were under orders to simply
allow
us
make it out of town intact.

It takes anywhere from ten seconds to four
hours to free Tara’s sleeve from the spiked ends of the
snake-harboring palmetto. They catch up to me and keep going
without any hesitation. I scramble along behind them, trying to
catch up.

The hounds have been let loose, and are
already within a hundred yards of us. Their barking grows more
ferocious when they pick up our scent.

“The dogs are getting closer, Layne,” Julie
says. “They’re going to catch us. What do we do?”

“Run,” I pant, one of the fronds slicing into
my cheek. “Don’t stop for anything. We have to get to the other
side of these woods. We have—oh shit I’ve got to quit smoking—we
have to get to the—”

The briefcase slips from my hand and lands in
the dirt. I keep running with the case dragging along behind me.
The handcuff digs deep into my wrist, tearing through the fresh
layer of skin. Blood runs down my arm and I have to stop and pick
it up again.

The barking grows even louder. The dogs are
gaining. They’re less than seventy-five yards behind us now.

“How much farther is it?” Tara gasps. “How
much? I can’t—”

The tree line grows larger in my sights, but
still seems miles away, as if the space between us and the forest
was somehow stretching, melting into the realm of sheer
impossibility. Besides, even if we make it to the trees, what then?
The dogs will still catch up to us. And if they don’t, the bullets
will.