HL 04-The Final Hour Read Free Page B

square of mirror on the wall, the sight wasn’t pretty. My face was purple and swollen and cut, but at least the bleeding had stopped.
    I went back to my cot and dropped down onto the thin mattress. I stretched out on my back and lay staring up at the white concrete ceiling. The faces of the people I loved and missed rose up before me again and then . . .
    Then, with a sort of flash, there was something else.
    A dark night. A torrential rain. A flash of lightning.
    I blinked, shaking my head. This was more like a vision than a memory. For one flashing second, that rainy night had seemed real; it had seemed to surround me.
    I breathed deeply, slowly, hoping that would be all there was. I didn’t think I was strong enough to go through a memory attack right now. But then . . .
    Then there it was again. Another flash. The dark night on every side of me. The rain lanced down at the windows. They were the grated windows of a bus. A prison bus. It was rumbling and shuddering around me.
    I understood what this was. Of course. I had been in prison once before. I had been convicted of murdering my friend Alex Hauser. I’d been convicted of plunging a knife into his chest after we had an argument over Beth. It was a frame-up, a false accusation, all part of Waterman’s plan to get me into the Homelanders, to convince them that I was ready to join their terrorist crew. After my arrest . . .
    I remembered now. I had been in a local jail for about a week. Then they’d put me on a bus to transfer me somewhere else. Here. They were going to send me here, to Abingdon.
    Reality seemed to flicker on and off. The past—that rainy night, the shuddering bus—seemed to flicker in and out of being around me.
    “Yes,” I whispered to myself. “Yes, I remember now . . .”
    I started to sit up on the cot.
    But then I doubled over in pain as the full memory attack struck me.

CHAPTER FOUR
Broadside
     
    It was so real. It wasn’t like a memory at all. It was just as if I was there, on the bus, in the night, in the storm.
    I was the only passenger on the long gray-green vehicle. The only other people there were the guard and the driver. The guard sat in a cage up front, cradling a shotgun on his lap. The driver was almost out of sight, just the top of his head showing over the big seat before the wheel.
    We were on a small road, a rough road. The bus rocked and bounced as it went over potholes. I was jostled back and forth, my shoulder hitting the window. For some reason, I couldn’t brace myself properly. I looked down to find out why. I was wearing an orange prison jumpsuit— and I was in shackles, my hands cuffed, my feet chained. My body was flung from side to side, striking the window grate just as lightning forked through the black sky, illuminating the slashing downpour for one trembling second.
    I noticed something else now too: My heart was beating hard. I was nervous, excited, afraid. Something was about to happen. I didn’t know exactly what it was and I didn’t know exactly when it would begin, but I sensed it would be soon.
    It came to me: Rose had told me the Homelanders were already working to break me out. He said they’d probably act fast before I was too closely guarded, surrounded by security.
    This seemed like a good time. Out on this bleak, empty road. Alone on this bus with only one guard and one driver.
    But even though I was expecting it at any moment, it was a shock when it actually happened.
    Suddenly, the windows exploded with blinding light. I turned and saw headlights glaring at me like a beast’s wild eyes. An engine roared—also like a wild beast. The lights grew larger and larger and the roar grew louder. Something—a tractor, I think—some huge vehicle—was charging at us from the side.
    The next second the bus was struck, a jarring, terrible blow. I heard the driver let out a ragged, guttural scream. The bus gave a stomach-turning heave under me and lifted up onto one side. For an endless moment it