Forty Leap (27 page)

The first cell was empty. There was a
paperback on the table, a piece of paper serving as a bookmark
jutting out of the middle. The changing screen was moved slightly
to the side, revealing the unoccupied toilet. The blanket and
pillow on the bed were ruffled as if the occupant had been sitting
there and lifted directly away. Or jumped. There were leapers in
many of the other cells and most of them were asleep.

In the second cell, counting on his fingers,
was Neville MacTavish. I didn’t believe it at first so I stood,
frozen in place, just watching him. He was a bit older, as if he
had spent a long time without jumping. I wondered about Rogers
Clinton, but not enough to look for him. Neville was dressed in
plain grey fatigues, like scrubs but a little bit heavier. They
were loose fitting and without pockets. His hair was ruffled and
his face was drawn. He had lost weight. But that fire was still in
his eyes and there was a meditative quality to his activities, as
if he did it to keep himself from going insane. He looked up
briefly, saw me, and looked down again. I just stared.

Eventually, he looked up again, drawn, I
suppose, by the fact that I wasn’t moving. He looked at me closely,
scowling, then asked, “Is there a problem? Never visited the freak
show before?”

“Neville,” I said.

“Mathew!” he shouted suddenly. “I don’t
believe it. How’d you manage it?”

I shook my head. “What? Like you, I guess. I
was scared and agitated…”

“Not that!” he chided. “When I popped back
into reality, they had a cage set up for me in just the right spot.
I never stood a chance.”

“Oh, that. They missed.”

At that we just both broke up laughing, as if
we were old friends sharing a private joke from long ago. But I had
seen Neville just an hour or so ago. For him, however, our
separation had been much longer.

“You’ve got to get me out of here,” he said,
then amended himself. “You’ve got to free all of us.”

I approached his cell. “How…”

His hands came up quickly in a warning.
“Don’t get too close! If you don’t have the right badge, you’ll set
off the alarms.”

“Then how am I supposed to get you out?”

Neville smiled and I realized how little of
him had changed. “You see that broom handle on your cart?”

I looked back, nodded.

“Take that and find a soldier who’s alone. It
shouldn’t be too hard to locate one. It’s late and it’s July
4
^th
. Still your country’s Independence Day. Well, one of
them anyway. Anyway, just find a soldier and hit him over the head
as hard as you can with that broom handle. Take his keys, gun and
his badge and get back here as fast as you can.”

I looked again at the broom handle, then back
at Neville. The doubt must have been pretty clear on my face
because his smile turned into a frown.

“I know you don’t think you stand much of a
chance…”

“I don’t even know if I can do it.”

“Well think of it this way. If you do this,
the forty of us can make enough trouble to at least get some of us
out of here. If not, well, there are plenty of empty rooms.”

“Forty?” I asked.

He made a sweeping motion with his hand and I
looked anew at the rows of cells. “Thirty nine prisoners currently,
here and in the other ward. You, my friend, are number forty.”

I looked at the cells and the forlorn faces
of those within. A number of those not sleeping had taken an
interest in my conversation with Neville, but no one offered any
opinions. There were a variety of faces by shape and skin color.
There were men and women. Who knew how long each of them had been
imprisoned? What did it matter? I had to do something.

“I’ll be back,” I promised, pushing my cart
back the way I had come.

I had no idea how I was going to find it
within myself to commit an act of unprovoked violence against
another person. It was bad enough that I had no experience with
that sort of thing, worse still that I was squeamish about it. I
wandered for the better part of an hour, seeing a number of
soldiers and never moving to intercept. In the first place, there
were always other people around. Few of them, it seemed, were on
any sort of duty. Instead, they were laughing merrily and obviously
taking part in the celebration. Neville had said it was the Fourth
of July. I knew that I couldn’t hope to succeed against more than
one person, especially more than one soldier. So I needed to find
one all by himself. Where could I do that?

I thought about visiting the soldiers’
quarters, but I was worried about setting off an alarm. Before
heading to see Neville, I hadn’t thought much of alarms. I suppose
I had been pretty lucky. Now, though, I was being excessively
cautious, aware of the consequences of getting caught. Too many
people were depending on me.

In a flash of insight, I realized that the
best place would be the bathroom. I found one that was close to
where the recreation areas were and went inside. A couple of people
saw me, but no one said anything. After all, how odd could it have
been to see a maintenance man go into a bathroom? The room was
small, with three urinals and two stalls. There was no place to
conceal the cart so I just left it out in the open. After my brief
encounter with the other maintenance man, I was leery about
pretending to clean the bathroom. I didn’t know the schedules and,
apparently, different workers had different sections. It seemed
more reasonable that I would be using the bathroom if someone
should come in. So I took a small bucket off of the cart and filled
it with water. Then I pushed the cart off to the side, armed myself
with the broom handle, and slipped into a stall.

The first time I heard the door open, there
were two voices so I stayed inside the stall. As they finished and
began to wash, I poured some of the water into the toilet to make
it sound as if I was urinating. Their conversation carried on
without pause so I felt safe enough when they left. Once I heard
the door close, I went back out and refilled my bucket.

I had to repeat this process a number of
times. Neville had said to target a soldier so I kept peeking out
to make sure of the people coming in. Once, I actually just used
the bathroom instead of faking it with the bucket. Finally, I had
my opportunity. A soldier came in by himself. He was larger than I
would have hoped, but he stepped up to a urinal, his back to me and
the stalls, and began to do his business. I think he might have
been drunk. This left me a window of about thirty seconds to act. I
felt cramped and self conscious in the small bathroom. I wasn’t
sure I would be able to swing the broom handle hard enough or in a
wide enough arc to do what I needed to do. I didn’t know if there
was a special spot I should attack. I was completely inadequate for
the task at hand. And yet I was determined so I placed my bucket on
the toilet paper dispenser and stepped out of the stall. I made no
attempt to sneak up on him. He already knew I was there and any
hesitant motions might very well have made him suspicious. Giving
myself some room, I lifted the broom handle high and wide and
brought it around against the side of his head.

He crumpled like a marionette.

There were tears in my eyes as I knelt beside
him, trying to avoid the spilled urine and blood. I quickly checked
to make sure he was breathing, which he was. I was disgusted with
myself. I thought to tie him up and stash him in a stall, but I
knew that it might take me too long so I just grabbed his ID badge
and his keys (which weren’t actual metal keys as I remembered them)
and his gun (which was exactly as I remembered guns) and left the
bathroom.

I was sweating now and must have looked as
guilty as I felt. There was no exhilaration to accompany my
success. He wasn’t like the man Jennie had killed on the ruined
streets of New York. This man could very well have a life and
responsibilities. I kept thinking of him as he might have been as a
child and a school boy. I kept thinking of the circumstances that
might have brought him into the army and out to the Rockies on this
assignment. I kept thinking of him as a victim and I didn’t like it
that he was
my
victim. I walked quickly back to the cells
which were as devoid of staff as they had been before. Neville
looked up immediately and there was a mixture of surprise and
respect in his eyes. I suppose he was glad to see me, but had never
really expected it. Then the alarms went off, my victim found I
suppose.

“Show me the keys!” Neville cried.

I did and he pointed out which one to use. It
fit into the clear door by one of the hinges and the locks made an
audible
chunk
as they disengaged. He pushed his way free,
nearly toppling me in the process, just as two doctors rounded the
corner. A soldier was behind them. Neville grabbed the gun from my
belt and lifted it without a second thought. He fired three times
and all three of them went down. The soldier never had a chance to
grab his own weapon.

The other leapers were looking up now. I saw
in their expressions nothing that resembled hope. But they were
eager to be free for however long they could be.

“Free them,” Neville said. “Free them
all.”

Horrified by what I had just witnessed, I
stood frozen in place, the keys dangling from my hands, my eyes
fixed on the dead and dying people at the end of the corridor.
Neville had no such feelings. He took the gun from the soldier
first and then relieved all three people of their ID badges. When
he noticed that I hadn’t moved, he shouted at me. “There are no
innocents here!”

He stood and marched right up to me. I
couldn’t look at him, couldn’t take my eyes from the people he had
just shot. Maybe they had families. Maybe someone needed them.

“Look at me.”

I couldn’t.

“
Look at me!
”

I just stared.

I knew there was no time, but I think I was
in shock. Neville had no patience for it and no patience for me. He
shoved me hard up against the wall and stripped off his shirt. His
chest and arms were riddled with scars and tracks. Now I couldn’t
look away from him, from his mutilated body.

“This is all of us, Mathew,” he cried. “If we
get caught, then it’s you, too.” Then he grabbed the keys from my
hand and began to set all of the other leapers free.

I stood there, paralyzed, awash in grief and
hopelessness. My gaze was fixed on Neville’s discarded shirt, just
laying in a heap on the floor. It had concealed something terrible,
something I had always feared every time anyone mentioned anything
about
experiments
. This was it. This was the real horror of
it. We weren’t human to these people. We were
subjects
.

I didn’t hear the charging footsteps and I
didn’t realize we were to be attacked until the shooting started. I
was in the middle of it all. A unit of soldiers, maybe four of
them, came around the corner with their rifles ready. But Neville
fired first and two of them were down before they had a chance to
return fire. The crack of their rifles was much louder than the
comparable
pop-pop
of the handgun. I jumped with each shot.
I heard someone cry out but didn’t look. Then the other two
soldiers went down.

“Get the guns,” I heard Neville say but he
wasn’t talking to me.

Two men and two women went to the fallen
soldiers and took their rifles and pistols. They began distributing
the weapons among the other freed leapers. I looked over at them,
gathering at the opposite end of the plexiglass corridor. There
were maybe twenty of them in all, several now armed, all angry.
Neville said something about the other ward and then came up to
me.

“I won’t expect you to fire a gun, Mathew.
You got us out and that’s enough. But don’t stand here and
die.”

“What?” I didn’t understand. There was blood
on Neville’s chest but it wasn’t his. I looked down the corridor to
see one of the newly freed leapers slouched on the floor, a wound
to her arm. She must have been near to Neville or maybe he had
tried to help her.

“Just stay close to me.”

He grabbed me by the elbow as if I were a
disobedient child and began to drag me out of the corridor. Many of
the others had already left and we were really just following. Two
turns later, we found ourselves in another corridor that looked
exactly like the first one. There were two rows of cells, about
fifteen deep each and most of them were filled with people. When we
had finished freeing them, there were forty of us in all. In the
background, the alarm klaxon blared on endlessly. But no more
soldiers came. Maybe they didn’t really know what was happening
yet. Maybe they were all too busy recovering from their
celebration.

“They’ll expect us to try and get out,”
Neville shouted at the group, taking charge. “Every exit will be
covered and we won’t stand a chance.”

“What do we do, then?” a lady asked back.

And Neville smiled.

He led us without hesitation to the research
labs and testing areas. There were no tests being conducted at the
moment. Not today. Not on Independence Day.

A clock read 11:04 pm.

Hefting his rifle, he opened fire on the test
equipment. He emptied an entire clip into the room, shredding
computers and other apparatus. Bits of glass and plastic flew in
every direction. Most of the leapers behind us cringed from the
noise and flying shrapnel. Neville just laughed as he fired. I just
stood and watched. When his rifle was empty, he threw it into the
ruined room and pulled the pistol from his waistband. An old man
with a smooth featured and elegant face came up and tugged on
Neville’s sleeve.

“What are you doing?” asked the man in a
richly accented voice.

Neville, standing almost a foot taller,
looked down at him. “If they won’t let us go, we’ll tear the
bleeding place down around them.” There was so much hate in his
voice that I found myself more afraid of him than of them. But I
couldn’t imagine what he had been through. He had not replaced his
shirt so he stood bare-chested among the debris, looking out at the
group as if we were his flock. His mutilated torso was a reminder
to all of us of just what went on in those labs. “I’ll tear out
every computer and snuff every life if I have to.
I won’t go
back in a cage!
”