End of Days (11 page)

It had been almost five hours since they’d taken off, and they’d land in less than thirty minutes. The flight wouldn’t have taken that long if they’d flown directly but that wasn’t the way things worked. They’d flown south for close to an hour before turning west—best way to throw off anybody tracking their original route.

“How’s he doing?” Dr. Miller asked.

“I just checked on him. Sleeping like a baby. I still can’t
believe he was able to get the jump on me. After all my training, after all I’ve been through … to have been killed by a kid would have been just too ridiculous an ending.”

“He’s not just any kid.”

“That’s for sure. Kid moved like a panther. But that wasn’t the impressive part.”

“What was?” Miller asked.

“Think about it. Despite everything that was going on around him he was still cool as a cucumber. He came up with a pretty good plan
and
he was able to execute it. At his age, I would have been crying and wetting myself.”

She laughed. “It sounds as though you’re more impressed than angry.”

“Why wouldn’t I be? Besides, like I said, at least this is a kid I can understand. Not like those others.”

“They are … different,” Miller agreed.

Over the past month their “special guests,” children and young people from around the world, had been transported to the centre. There were now almost a hundred of them, with more arriving daily. They were coming from the four corners of the planet. Specially selected and trained, they seemed more like small, serious adults than the children or teenagers they really were. They were unfailingly polite, quiet, and spent more time talking and reading than playing. Actually, had anyone ever seen any of them play?

The pilot made an announcement instructing everybody to prepare for landing.

Dr. Miller checked Billy’s seatbelt—it was snuggly on—before quickly taking her seat and clipping on her belt. The
aircraft banked suddenly and began a fast descent. It felt as though the plane was coming straight down. That was the way it always was. Coming in through the narrow passage between the mountains left little choice, but it was also part of the strategy—along with false flight plans, flying in the wrong direction from any city, flying too low to be seen by radar—to confuse any attempts that might be made to track the plane.

The plane banked sharply and then levelled out. Miller looked out the window. There was nothing to see but wilderness up close and the tips of snow-capped mountains closing out the distance. The wheels touched down and the plane bounced slightly before settling back to the pavement. The engines roared loudly as the pilot initiated back thrust to slow them down. The runway was short and surrounded on all sides by dense brush. There was little room for error, and it took a skilled pilot to stick a landing on this strip. The plane quickly slowed down and then came to a stop, the engines dying almost immediately.

“It’s time to wake him up,” Miller said.

She got up from her seat and knelt down beside Billy. She pulled out a small kit and from it produced a hypodermic needle and a small vial of liquid. She pushed the tip of the needle through the top of the bottle and drew in the clear liquid. She then injected it into Billy’s arm.

“That should do it,” she said. She gently shook Billy by the shoulders. “Time to get up, Billy.”

Billy heard a voice, but in his sleepy, drugged state he couldn’t figure out who it was or why it was calling to him. He forced
his eyes open. A woman was looking back at him, but he couldn’t make out her face clearly. Who was it?

“It’s okay, Billy, it’s Amanda Miller … we’re here.”

Here? Where was
here?

“Time to get up.”

He didn’t want to get up. He just wanted to stay in bed and … suddenly his mind started to come back to life. He remembered the things that had happened: the police, being captured, the fight in the car, and finally the needle sticking into his arm. Was that why he was feeling so light-headed, because of what was in that needle?

“We’re going to help you get to your feet,” the guard said.

Billy felt his seatbelt snap open and then two sets of strong hands—the two guards—helped him up. His feet felt heavy and his legs rubbery.

“Best thing to do is walk it off,” the guard said. “That stuff is pretty powerful.”

“What … what did you give me?” he stammered.

“A sedative.”

“But … but … I
gave
you the blade.”

“We couldn’t take the chance that you might try something else, especially on the plane ride.”

That was right, they’d mentioned a plane. He looked around, and through the fog in his eyes he could see that he was on an airplane. He was still having trouble focusing but everything was becoming clearer. Billy slid his hand down his left leg to the place where he always kept his second knife secured in a sheath in his sock—it was gone. They had
thoroughly searched him after he’d been knocked out. They weren’t going to be surprised again.

“I was sorry we had to do that,” the guard said.

“Everybody keeps telling me they’re sorry, but they keep doing things to me. Let go of me,” he demanded.

To his surprise they listened and released him. His knees buckled and he would have collapsed to the ground if they hadn’t grabbed him again. So much for any thought of running. So much for any thought of even standing on his own, without their help.

They walked him toward the open hatch. The light was bright and he held up a hand to shield his eyes. He looked all around. He was surrounded by trees and rocks as far as he could see in all directions. Somehow they had landed in the middle of a forest.

The two guards helped him down the stairs. He was still so unsure on his feet that if they hadn’t been holding him he would have tumbled down the stairs to the ground … wait, there was no ground at the end of the steps. It was a river! They’d landed in a river!

“That’s water—we can’t go down there!” Billy protested.

“It just looks like water,” one of the guards said.

They stepped off the stairs and onto the “river.” It was solid, smooth asphalt. He strained to look along the length of this strange runway. It was then that he realized it was painted to look like a stream instead of a landing strip.

“Why … why is it like this?”

“From the air, or from a satellite, it looks like an offshoot of a river that runs right by here. We prefer that
nobody know there’s a runway here,” Dr. Miller explained.

“Where are we?” Billy asked.

“You’ll be told everything. Just not by me,” Dr. Miller said.

A Jeep was waiting off at the side, along with a third guard.

Billy sensed that he was quickly coming back to normal. His vision was clearing, he could feel the life returning to his legs, and his thoughts seemed to be more connected. Instantly he began to think again about getting away, but his newly returning faculties allowed him to realize that this wasn’t the moment. Whatever they’d given him was still impairing his system. If he couldn’t get away from two guards, he wasn’t going to be able to evade three. Besides, where was he going to run to? There was nothing but rocks and trees, and how far was he from home? He’d been on a plane—a
plane
—for who knew how long!

Billy was placed in the back of the Jeep, with guards pinning him in on both sides. Dr. Miller sat next to the driver in the front.

The Jeep followed a narrow road, not much more than twice its width. Billy tried to see where they were going but his view was restricted by the trees that hemmed in the road on all sides. He suddenly realized that this road was painted to match the runway. From the air, it too would appear to be a branch of the river. That explained why it was so winding and narrow.

“There it is, home sweet home,” Dr. Miller said.

Billy leaned forward to glance through the front windshield. “Where?”

“Right there. Don’t you see it?” Amanda said, pointing straight ahead.

Straight ahead was a high rock face, the side of a mountain. “All I can see are rocks and trees,” Billy replied.

“Hold on to your hat,” the driver said as the Jeep started to accelerate.

They were driving directly at the rocks! They were going to crash! Billy braced himself for impact and—They drove
through
the rocks and were in a tunnel! Billy’s mouth dropped open. Was he hallucinating? Were the drugs they’d given him affecting his mind, or—

“Holographic imagery,” Dr. Miller explained, “to camouflage the entrance. I guess we should have mentioned that.”

They whizzed through the tunnel—all white walls and bright lights—and when they came to a stop and climbed out of the vehicle they were standing in a large chamber, three or four storeys high, as big as a concert hall.

“This is … this is … I’ve never seen anything like this,” Billy stammered. The walls were shiny and oddly curved, and while the room was well lit, the source of the illumination was unseen.

“It is hard to describe,” one of the guards said.

“A little more impressive from the inside,” Dr. Miller noted. “From the air the whole place looks like nothing more than an abandoned factory and mineshaft sitting in the middle of forest, rocks, rivers, and lakes. You’ll see that the next time you’re in a plane and awake.”

“The next time?” Billy asked.

“I’m sure there will be one,” she noted. “But first things first. You have an appointment.”

“Who am I meeting?”

“The person who will answer all of the questions you must have. We’d better hurry. He doesn’t like to be kept waiting.”

They walked across the room and through a metal door into a long corridor. Here, too, the walls were curved, so it was more like a tube than a hallway. Again, unseen lighting gave off a warm, soft glow. The corridor was long and narrow, just wide enough for the two of them to walk side by side. The three guards walked in single file behind them. Billy ran his hand along the wall as they walked. It was metal but so incredibly smooth that it felt like glass. He banged his knuckles and a clear, round tone answered back.

They entered another, larger room. Sitting at the far side, behind a desk, was a woman working at a computer. She looked up at their approach.

“He’s expecting you. Please go in,” she said.

They started for a door at the far end of the room.

“No,” the woman said. “Not all of you. Just the boy.”

Hesitantly, opening the door only slightly, Billy peered in. His focus fell first on the only person in the room. There was a man—an old man—sitting behind a desk at the far end. Billy stepped in and closed the door behind him.

Instinctively he began to size up the situation—his survival depended on being able to see where danger lay, determining what he could use in his defence, or failing that, finding a way to escape.

The old man seemed so focused on his work that he might have been unaware of Billy’s presence. There was no weapon on the desk that Billy could see, and the man himself—who was thin and old—didn’t seem to present a threat. He could snap the old man’s neck in two if he needed to.

On one wall were paintings. On the other was a gigantic mirror. On the third, behind the desk, were a large window and a door, obviously leading outside. Through the
window he could see an open space and then a small fence, something he could easily scale, and beyond that a forest. Getting past the old man wouldn’t be a problem. Then, if the door was unlocked, he could bolt across the clearing, hurdle the fence, and be lost in the forest in a matter of seconds.

“If you’re wondering,” the old man said, his head down, still working, “the door is unlocked. And while the fence that you see isn’t high, it is electrified.” He looked up. “It’s to keep out the bears and cougars, but I’ve seen deer jump over it. They like to nibble on the grass in the compound. You appear to be in good shape. I would hazard a guess that you could probably clear it if you had a running start.”

Billy didn’t even need to guess. He’d get over.

“And once you get over the fence, you could be in the trees in seconds. It would be very hard to find you in there,” the old man said, his eyes once again focused on the work on his desk.

Billy took a half step toward the door and then stopped. Why was he telling him all of this?

“Travelling
beyond
those trees would present the difficulty. There are over two hundred kilometres of trees, rocks, swamps, rivers, and total wilderness. Have you ever been in the wilderness before?”

Billy thought about that for a second. He had survived wilderness all right, but all of it inside the New York city limits.

“That’s what I thought,” the old man said, assuming the answer was no. “Even if you were an experienced woodsman it would take you close to a week to travel the distance to the
nearest town—assuming you knew which direction to travel. I’ve heard that following a river downstream is an excellent strategy for finding civilization. But if you did find that town, you would still be close to four thousand kilometres away from New York. I would be shocked if you could reach it before the end, and even if you did, what then? You’d die in the midst of squalor and garbage. Is that how you want to face your death?”

The man started to write again, his head down, dismissing Billy as if he were no longer there.

Billy edged toward the door. Just because this old man told him these things didn’t mean they were true. Maybe there was just a thin layer of trees, and once he’d penetrated that there would be a road right there, and maybe New York wasn’t that far away … although he
had
been brought here on an airplane. They wouldn’t have used that just to drive him across the street.

Billy pulled the handle and the door opened.

“Are you going for a walk?” the old man asked.

Billy didn’t answer.

“You don’t have to be afraid of me.”

“You should be afraid of
me
,” Billy said quietly.

The old man chuckled. “Good to hear that you can talk.”

“Do you think that your guards could get in here fast enough to stop me from snapping your neck?” Billy asked.