Eleven Twenty-Three (48 page)

Hajime relinquishes his hold of the TRANSMIT
button and everything goes quiet. The breeze picks up and I can
hear the branches of the trees quiver. A stray piece of trash
tumbles by, brushes against my blanket, and is gone.

Static on the radio. Hajime breathing.

“I see a world that worships a fictional
past…A million Generation Whys who couldn’t tell you what the next
town over looked like...I see the same tan stucco outlet malls
every hundred yards, stretching from coast to coast and working
their way into every nook and cranny in between…I see ten thousand
TGI Fridays stuffed inside an Outback and nestled up against a
Chilli’s underneath a Starbucks across the street from another
Starbucks…There’s a TV channel for every outdoor activity and a
website for every reason to leave your home…It’s a planet of bored
Manchurian candidates and smaller and smaller rooms that wield
greater and greater power…I see aliens that no longer pretend
they’re human, politicians that proudly proclaim they’re aliens,
and good men pretending to be politicians…”

I swallow and faintly detect the squeak of
brakes somewhere in the distance.

“I see fabricated plagues burying all the
records of ethnic cleansing; staged assassinations and blasé
terrorism; the Burmisation of Planet Burma; and a country that
still thinks it’s a super-power and super-powers that still thinks
they’re countries…It’s a world of children who can’t read or write
but can design a webpage, and grandmothers signing up for Facebook
to tell their grandkids they’ll be dying soon…I see—”

Now an engine revs and I can faintly hear
men’s voices. A moment later, the brakes squeak again. It’s coming
from around the corner.

What troubled me was that, according to
Mitsuko, her husband leapt from the balcony of their townhouse onto
the sidewalk below and broke his neck. But I distinctly remembered
that their townhouse balcony overlooked the
courtyard
—

“If we don’t get the chance to tell you
later, thank you,” Julie said to Hajime, leaning in and giving him
a long, sincere kiss on the lips. “Thank you so much. You know,
it’s not too late to join us. Are you sure you want to stay?”

But it
was
too late, and Julie knew
it. If Hajime didn’t remain here, we all would. Forever.

“I’m not running through a swamp, Jules. I
don’t really fancy riding in a truck full of rotting corpses,
either. But thanks for the invite, anyway. Now don’t worry about
me. You kids be careful tonight.”

“You too,” my girlfriend says, picking up a
bloody sheet. “And tell Lilly’s End goodbye for us, okay?”

“As long as you tell the world that I saved
your asses, fought the conspirators till the end, and had a
thirteen-inch penis, no problem.”

“Hajime was the Asian John Holmes, I tell
you.”

Hajime and I laughed and exchanged a
handshake that became a hug. Then I turned and headed toward the
street.

The courtyard outside their second floor
townhouse was grass. Not sidewalk. It was grass. It’s possible that
Mark could have broken his neck from this height, but Mitsuko said
he landed on the sidewalk. Maybe she was just caught up in her
grief and misspoke. The only flaw in this theory was that Mitsuko
had never been caught up in grief her entire life, up to and
including the past four days.

Just then, we made eye contact. Her glance
filled me with winter dread. A moment later, all of us took our
positions on the street. I tried to ignore the feeling in my
stomach and the alarms going off in my brain, but everything was
wrong. We had made alliances with a villain, but it was too late to
turn back. We would simply have to be ready to deal with whatever
form her inevitable betrayal would take.

“Hajime?”

“I don’t want to take part in a world like
this,” Hajime says into the radio. “That’s why I can’t go with you
guys tonight. All pessimism regarding your escape plan noted, I
think that what I’m really afraid of is out there beyond the
barricade. At least in here I know my future. You understand? It’s
okay if you don’t, because one day soon, I think you just
might.”

“Hajime—”

“Layne, the truck is coming.”

The moment he completes his sentence, I can
hear the Humvee come to a stop somewhere close. I can’t tell for
certain, but it sounds like it’s already on Flint Street, parked
somewhere near Julie on the corner. The engine rumbles and the
truck doesn’t move. Through the growl of the motor, I can faintly
detect two men speaking to each other in German.

“They picked up Julie and put her in the
back,” Hajime whispers into the walkie-talkie.

“Hajime,
shh
,” Tara breathes, and the
radio goes silent.

The longest moment of my life passes, and is
replaced by another moment—this one even longer.

The driver releases the emergency brake, and
the vehicle rolls forward. It stops again a moment later and goes
into Park. The two MOPPs chat away and at one point laugh over
something involving the German word “fotze.” It sounds like they’re
somewhere near Mr. Dawson’s house. They’ll be picking up Mitsuko
and Tara very soon, if they’re not doing it already. One of the
soldiers strains his speech for a moment, as if he were picking up
something heavy.

Every impulse wants to tear the blanket away,
leap to my feet, and go running toward the house. My breathing
becomes shallow. My eyes leak fear. The briefcase burrows into my
spine and they’re going to know it’s there when they pick me up.
They’re going to pull away my subterfuge. Then they’re going to
shoot me in the face.

This is a terrible plan. A terrible plan that
I designed.

The truck resumes its route. I swallow down a
bout of dry heaves and clench my eyes shut even though I’m already
blind to whatever’s out there. The Humvee approaches slowly, but
judging from the direction their voices are coming from, the two
soldiers are on foot, flanking the truck. When the brakes squeak
and it stops again, it’s only about thirty feet away. The soldiers
pick up something wrapped in plastic, like a trash bag.

“Mitsuko and Tara are in the back,” Hajime
whispers a second later, and then static on the radio.

I scrub the sweat from my palms and turn the
walkie-talkie off.

I wait.

The truck rolls toward me as the other
corpses are tossed into the back, on top of the three girls. One of
them could crack at any moment. As the truck gets within a few feet
and I can actually
hear
the Germans’ footsteps as they
approach me, there’s a faint whimper. A girl’s voice. Julie’s.

Their footsteps cease. The soldiers stop in
their tracks.

This is the part where we die.

No one moves. I stop breathing and wish I was
in Myanmar. I wish I could have helped someone, anyone—even if that
person was myself—during this brief, staid existence, and wish that
just once, things wouldn’t end the way we always knew they
would.

The footsteps resume, and before I realize
what’s happening, the two men have taken positions at my head and
feet.

I can hear their breathing.

“Die person in diesem Beutel atmet,” one of
them says in a cool voice. “Sie sind lebendig.”

“
Ja
. Ist nicht. Machen Sie sich keine
Sorgen, Dass es im Plan.”

They chuckle and one of them grabs at my
feet. The other gropes along the blanket for my shoulders. I hold
onto the briefcase handle and brace myself.

They pick me up, the MOPP’s fingers digging
into my shoulders. They stagger toward the truck with me in tow.
The metal coil brushes against the fabric, but the susurrus is
overpowered by the engine of the Humvee. We turn left and the
Germans hold my corpse very still, as if deciding whether or not to
throw it in with the rest.

“Fertig?” the smooth voice says. “Fertig?
Eine, zwei…
drei
!”

They toss me into the back of the truck. I
land on another body. The stiff cadaver I collapse on doesn’t
flinch or squeal, leading me to believe it’s not one of the girls.
The briefcase burrows into my spine upon landing, however, and I
stuff my fist into my mouth to keep from crying out in pain.

One of the men says something into his radio,
and they climb onto the back of the carrier. The engine revs up and
soon we’re in motion, the soldiers joking and carrying on behind me
in the blackness. The truck slows and turns off of Flint Street. It
picks up speed on its way toward the barricade line.

[
TIME
UNDETERMINED
]

“Layne…can you hear me?” Tara whispers.

“I shouldn’t be
hearing
anything,” I
whisper back, and focus on the engine.

It’s drowned out by a hundred frantic voices
coming from what seems like every direction. The Humvee slows to a
crawl and the men speak into their radios. The frantic voices of
the Lilly’s End ghosts crescendo as they haunt the carrier.

We’ve reached the barricade line.

Swarms of people surround the truck and
hammer the sides with sticks and rocks. They throw bottles at the
soldiers, who do not react. One of the bottles must strike Mitsuko,
because I can hear her suck in her breath and curse, wishing all
these people would just die already.

It’s not until the road blocks are
temporarily lifted and the truck moves into the military encampment
that things get out of hand. I hear screaming and the scurrying of
dozens of feet; men barking orders and other men carrying them out;
the click of machine guns being loaded and British accents sending
out grave warnings for everyone to move away from the
barricade.

Then someone scrambles onto the back of the
truck with the soldiers.

Before I can piece together what is happening
outside my blanket, the typewriter-like sound of automatic fire
rips through the air and something wet splashes against the outside
of my blanket. A fresh corpse collapses at my knees, and the truck
roars past the crowd into the encampment. A moment later, the
soldiers fire warning shots to scare off the residents.

We move deeper and deeper into the compound.
I pick out fragments of conversation—Courtney Park; newly estimated
public approval ratings; a soldier named Whitney who has the
imagination of a sewer rat; catching the funk from a whore in
Borneo last year, a speech from President Bush that will,
ironically, air Thursday evening following the new episode of
Survivor
; and what the first thing two Brits would do once
they return to Bath on leave next month.

Finally, the two MOPPs jump from the back and
the Humvee stops moving. The engine dies and the cab door opens.
The driver gets out and makes a report to a superior who says
nothing in response: twenty-two corpses, ready for disposal. I hear
retreating footsteps as the soldiers run past the truck toward the
skirmish. Then it appears we’re left alone in the night, the
temperature dropping and the turmoil at the barricade growing more
and more insistent. Warning shots turn into kill shots and the
screaming shifts from desperate to defeated.

No one says anything for a very long time,
all four of us terrified that the moment someone breaks the blind
silence, the Germans or maybe one of their international cohorts
will spray us with bullets.

Julie: “So now what? I can’t stay buried
underneath this guy for much longer. He’s heavy and his blood is
running down onto my leg. I’m going to freak out.”

Me: “No one is going to do anything. We’re
just going to sit here and wait for Hajime. You know that.”

Mitsuko: “I say we make a run for it now.
They’re preoccupied with the townspeople. We should get out of here
while we have the chance. We’re probably a good fifty yards from
the barricade. No one will even see us.”

Me: “
No
, Mitsuko. We’re going to wait
for your brother. That’s the plan, god damn it, and we’re sticking
to it. If we go now, we’ll be mowed down before even making it out
of the encampment.”

Mitsuko: “My brother’s not going to come
through and you know it, Layne. We’ve got to move now.”

Tara: “You move and we’re dead.”

Mitsuko: “We
stay
and we’re dead.”

Mitsuko quiets down and we lie there,
waiting. Julie squirms out from underneath the body on top of her.
It lands with a monumental thud on the bed and I suck in my breath,
waiting for someone to notice the corpses’ movement.

Nothing happens.

There’s more shuffling around, but this time
I can hear fabric rustling, and Mitsuko cursing. She rips open the
bed sheet she’s wrapped in and tosses it to my feet.

“Mitsuko, what the hell are you doing?”

“It just occurred to me that I’m taking
orders from a guy who returned to America under very mysterious
circumstances who has a briefcase attached to his wrist.”

At the barricade line, another burst of
automatic fire. Screaming. A child crying. Things go quiet
again.

“What’s your point?” I ask.

“My point is that I’m out of here. You can
wait for my idiot brother to come through if you want, but I’m
getting out now while the peons are still going berserk out there.
You guys have fun breathing in the stench.”

I can’t take it anymore and jerk the blanket
off of my face so I can see what’s happening. Even in the dank
shadows cast by the floodlights, it takes my eyes a long moment to
adjust after my temporary blindness. We’re some ways from the
barricade, our Humvee parked behind three others that are also
loaded with corpses. The whole area reeks of decomposition. We’re
flanked by massive military tents on each side. There’s a pine tree
less than two feet from the truck’s rear left tire. I see the back
of a doctor’s head about twenty-five feet away as he smokes a
cigarette and chats in Arabic on a cell phone. Otherwise, the
trucks have been left unattended.