HL 04-The Final Hour Read Free Page A

him—Waterman had given me an antidote to the amnesia drug, another drug to make those memories return. They returned, all right, in sudden attacks, that were sometimes accompanied by spasms of terrible, gripping pain. Those “memory attacks” still overwhelmed me sometimes and I dreaded them. But bit by bit, they were giving me back the life I had lost, the truth about myself. I was grateful for that.
    The memories I was having now, though—now as I lay on the cell floor—these were different. I felt no pain as I saw the faces of the people I loved—or, that is, the only pain I felt was the pain of being unable to reach out and touch them, to hear their voices, to be with them. Because I had been processed back into prison as a fugitive, I had hardly gotten to see anyone before I was locked away. I was in court just long enough to see Beth and my mother crying as they sat on one of the courtroom benches, to see my father just barely holding himself together beside them, my friends raising fists of encouragement while their eyes registered despair.
    Then I was brought here to Abingdon. I was allowed to call my lawyer, but that was it: You had to earn other phone privileges through good behavior. I hadn’t even gotten a visiting day yet so I hadn’t seen any of the people I loved, not really. I felt as if they might as well be on the far side of the moon.
    Remembering, I continued to lie where I was. The blood ran out of my nose and out of a cut on my forehead. It pooled, damp and thick and sticky, around my face. I wanted to get up. I wanted to clean myself off. But I couldn’t muster the strength to move. I just lay there and let the images pass.
    Finally, after a while, I managed to pray a little, in a confused, sort of dreamy way. I didn’t ask God to send angels down from the sky to lift me out of there or anything like that. I knew the world didn’t work that way. I knew God made people free and gave them choices, and I knew that meant they could do bad stuff to one another if they wanted to. Maybe life would be easier if we were all just God-zombies doing what was right automatically. But no one ever said freedom was easy.
    So I just prayed God would keep his hand in my hand. I knew he knew what it was like to have people do unfair things to you and to hurt you for their own reasons. I just prayed he would stand next to my mom and dad and next to Beth and my friends and whisper to them that he remembered what it felt like, that he knew.
    Things come into your head when you pray, I’ve noticed. Helpful things, almost like messages. Right now, for instance, I remembered the Churchill card, the index card Sensei Mike had given me. He’d written some words on the card, words once spoken by the British prime minister Winston Churchill, a speech he’d given during World War II when it seemed the Nazis might destroy his country: “Never give in; never give in—never, never, never, never, in nothing great or small, large or petty, never give in except to convictions of honour and good sense. Never yield to force: Never yield to the apparently overwhelming might of the enemy.”
    Somehow the words made me feel a little better. They made me feel good about not giving Dunbar the lie he wanted to hear. He had the “overwhelming might of the enemy,” that was for sure. He could beat me up as much as he wanted and there wasn’t anything I could do to stop him. But the truth—the truth belonged to me. It was mine, and I hadn’t let him take it from me.
    Lying on the floor in my own blood, I closed my hand. It was funny: I would almost swear I felt another hand in mine.
    I’m not alone, Dunbar, I thought. I’m never alone .
    I found the strength to rise.
    Groaning, I got to my knees. I took hold of the edge of my cot. I pulled myself up and climbed slowly to my feet. I hobbled slowly to the steel sink in the corner and washed my face, watching the blood swirl down the drain. When I raised my eyes to the small