Andrew Klavan - The last thing I remember

The truck was turning as it hit the gates. It hit off center, but that seemed to help somehow: the hood shoved the half-open gate open wide. I stomped on the gas again. The truck let out another throaty roar and fired forward through the gates and out of the compound.

This is what I saw in that next insane, panicked, terrified second. I saw a dirt road leading through a small field of grass and wildflowers. I saw the field end in forest-what looked like deep forest that went on a long, long way. I saw the dirt road become a dirt trail that vanished among the trees. I saw the blue sky and big, lofty clouds blowing by over the treetops.

I wrenched the wheel one more time, straightening the truck on the dirt road. I sped toward the trailhead, toward the protection of the forest.

I never made it.

The road was rough. There were deep holes in the dirt. Big rocks strewn about everywhere. It wasn’t a road made for fast travel. And I was traveling fast-very fast-as fast as that truck could go. The pedal was hard against the floor. My speed was increasing with every second. The cool air was streaming in on me through the broken windshield, and so was the blinding dust. Grass and white wildflowers, meadow and woods and sky were rushing by the windows on either side. The truck was bouncing crazily, lifting up high on every rock, dropping down hard, diving and jolting with a sickening crunch into each new hole.

I didn’t care. I paid no attention. I never touched the brakes. I never let up on the gas. I could still hear the rattling coughs of those machine guns behind me-at least I thought I could-that sound was stuck in my imagination now. I could hear it in my mind, anyway, and I could practically feel the bullets flying after me, searching out my flesh, trying to tear into me, to tear me apart. All I wanted was to get to those trees. That’s all I cared about. To get into the darkness of the woods before the guards and their guns caught up with me.

But it was no good. It was too fast-too fast for that road, those rocks, those holes. I was too wild with panic, too desperate and afraid to keep control of that speeding truck for long.

It was a rock that did it in the end. A great, flat gray rock hidden in the rough dirt road until the last minute. I saw it only a split second before my left front tire hit it with full force. At that speed, that was all it took. The pickup lifted into the air. The steering wheel became useless in my hands. I wrenched it to the side, tried to land the truck again, but it made no difference. I had no control. The truck went over. It hit the ground with a force that made my eyes rattle. The next thing I knew, it was turning over and over, hurling me this way and that inside the cab.

Instinctively, I let go of the wheel. I threw my arms up to protect my head. There was nothing now but nauseating chaos. I caught glimpses of the trees turning sideways through the jagged frame of the broken windshield. I saw the sky turning and the clouds turning and everything rolling over and over. My body was smashed against the ceiling, then against the door, and then thrown sideways across the passenger seat.

Then it was finished. The truck lay still. There was silence-only it wasn’t really silence-it was just my own muddied consciousness, too shocked and battered to take in anything going on outside. I don’t know how long I was like that. Not long, I guess. It was probably just a few seconds before my mind began to clear, before the sounds of the world started to come back to me. They were the same sounds as before, the same sounds that seemed to have been surrounding me for hours now, maybe forever. The sound of the chattering rifles, the sound of shouting-“Get him! Go!”-the sound of running footsteps, muffled now as my pursuers left the compound and came toward me across the meadow.

I lay in the cab of the truck, dazed. I lay there and listened to the sounds. The sounds made me feel-I don’t know-very sad and very tired somehow. I felt much too tired to do anything, to try to run anymore or fight or escape. I just wanted all these evil people to go away. I just wanted them to leave me alone. I wanted to be home again, back in my own house, in my own bed, waiting half-awake for my mom to call upstairs and tell me it was time to get ready for school. Why were these people hurting me? Why were they after me? How could I stop them? I was just a kid. I lay there in the cab of the overturned truck and I just wanted to break down and cry with weariness and frustration.

Lazily, my head rolled to one side. My vision seemed dull. The world seemed covered with shadows. Through those shadows, I could make out the light of day. I could make out the scene through the truck window. The world out there seemed to be very far off. It seemed as if it had nothing to do with me.

There they were. Same as before. Those men. Those men running after me. Those men with rifles coming to get me, coming to drag me back to the compound and strap me back in that chair and shoot that poison into me and watch me scream and scream until I was dead.

There they were. Coming closer every second.

And I was just too tired, too sick, too beaten to go on running anymore.

Lunch Lying there, my spirit broken, my mind flashed back in time again, my heart went home. A series of images swam swiftly through my dazed brain. That last morning… my karate demonstration… Beth… Alex… It seemed now like a sweet, simple time: the last good day. It seemed now that my life had been perfect then. I had food to eat, and a house to live in, parents to take care of me. I lived in a wonderful, free country where I could say what I wanted and do what I wanted and be anything I had the talent to be. No one was shooting at me or beating me up or strapping me to chairs and trying to inject acid into me. I should have woken up every morning and thanked God for his blessings. I should have headed off to school each day whistling a happy tune.

But at the time, it didn’t seem like that at all. At the time, I thought I had plenty to worry about-plenty. I mean, I was in high school, for one thing. What could be more worrisome than that? For another thing, this was the year I had to take calculus. It was insanely hard, and I worried it would wreck my grade point average. And if it didn’t, there was Mr. Sherman, my history teacher, to worry about. I thought he was out to get me because I argued with him all the time, and a lot of the time I won. For instance, he stood up in class once and said all these nasty things about America. He said America was racist and violent and greedy. So I just got up and told him that he was wrong and that the facts proved him wrong. I told him, sure, people in America make mistakes because people everywhere make mistakes. But when you came right down to it, there was not one place on Earth where people had any freedom or dignity or human rights and America hadn’t helped it happen or helped it stay that way. I challenged him to name one place-one single place on Earth-and he couldn’t, because there isn’t one. Ever since then, I’d been getting lower grades on my papers for his class.

So that made me worry I wouldn’t get into a decent college. And that made me worry I couldn’t fulfill my secret ambition in life, which I hadn’t told anyone because I worried it would make my mother’s head explode in terror and because I wasn’t even sure it was realistic anyway- and I worried about that too.

And maybe more than anything, I worried about Beth Summers. Whom I couldn’t stop thinking about and who seemed kind of impossibly out of my league. Every time she even got close to me, I started to sound as if my IQ had dropped forty points and someone had superglued my tongue to the top of my mouth. “Heddo, Bet, it gud to tee you.” Plus there was a rumor that she had kind of a thing for someone else and that he had kind of a thing for her- and that this someone else was Alex Hauser, who happened to technically still be my best friend.