Faster on My Own: Chapter 33
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The chains, Steven thought, were a bit dramatic. They chafed his wrists and clanked as he walked, four armed guards stood at his corners, creating invisible walls through which no one could pass. This outcome, and the execution which certainly awaited him, irritated Steven. He was happy, of course, to die for the revolution, but dying before the victory, missing the climactic moment, seemed like a waste. The French Revolution, after all, would have gone much better if they’d killed the king earlier or later. The in-between just clouded the narrative of it, and would with this revolution. Especially with Sam to deal with. Maybe if they killed her quickly enough after Steven, in a hundred years it would just look like there were some vestiges of his regime left after his death. That wouldn’t be so bad.
One of the rebel guards jabbed him in the back as they walked. Why they were walking at all, Steven had no idea. Even with the Air Force reduced to three shitty planes on a sinking boat, drones posed a significant danger. Maybe not yet. In the past, Steven had kept the drones overseas, intentionally fighting having any significant number on American soil. They were too great an advantage in a war such as this. Steven wondered if he should tell the rebel leader that he had a day or two before drone strikes would start. Even temporarily safe, this trudge into the Appalachians, after driving all the way up to the mountains, made no tactical sense to Steven. The hike would surely tire out the rebel troops. Down a leader, they needed every advantage they could get against Steven’s, now Sam’s, looming military.
Steven’s feet ached as they walked uphill. Why hadn’t their leader, whoever took over for Charlotte, come to speak with him yet? He was the captured dictator of the government they were rebelling against. Even if just to brag, the leader should want to see him. But they continued their hike until reaching a spot with well-cleared ground but enough tree cover above that the moonlight had to squirm through the leaves to scatter itself on the ground. They stuck him in a small tent, his chains staked to the ground. He said, as they hammered the stake, “This is all very sixteenth century, don’t you think?”
But no one responded. He sat on the ground and tried to ignore the lone guard sitting in the room with him. Briefly, he considered his escape options. If he could get his chains out of the ground without the guard noticing— likely impossible—he’d have the opportunity to run blindly into the camp. If he escaped—unlikely— he’d be left with the rest of the forest, which each of the rebels knew better than him. With nothing to do, Steven tried to sleep, but as soon as he got close to drifting off, a new guard clomped into his tent and switched with the old one. While the last guard had been like a statue, the new one stole glance after glance at Steven, who assumed that he must be impressed to share a room with a figure of such world-historical import as Steven. But he didn’t say anything until half an hour passed.
Then, he crouched down to the ground and removed the regulation black beanie. “Sir. President Williams. I can’t believe you’re here. It’s me, Johnathan Knighton.”
Steven grimaced. “You’re going to have to help me out, kid. I’m the president, I meet a lot of people.”
Leaning close enough for Steven to see a wispy mustache clinging to his upper lip, Johnathan said, “I’m the mole. The one you sent. I was told you picked me personally.”
“Ah, right. Of course. Johnathan! My inspiration.” Steven had no idea who he was, and hoped it wasn’t too obvious. From the dejected look on his guard’s face, Steven could tell he had not been convincing. “Okay, I’ll be honest. I never pick anyone personally. That’s the kind of thing I delegated because I had too much to do. Telling you that I chose you, it’s a morale booster sort of thing. You get it. More importantly, you are now in position to help me in a way none of your colleagues could ever dream of.”
That got Johnathan’s blood pumping. He stammered and looked toward the entrance of the tent. “I don’t know if I can help you escape just yet. It’ll take some work to distract everyone and-“
“No, no. I don’t want to leave just yet. I need information. With the coup and all, it’s possible I haven’t been getting a full picture.”
“Um, okay. So, you already know about the planes?”
“Yes. That intel, by the way, would have been welcome earlier.”
“I know. I’m sorry. It’s so hard to get information out of here.” He clasped his hands to beg for forgiveness, which Steven brushed off.
“Don’t worry about it. It’s probably for the best. I need to know what’s happened in the last two days. My other guards haven’t been all that chatty.” Steven jerked his thumb at the door of the tent.
“Right, of course. Stupid. So, the military split pretty much in half. The loyalist army was fighting the coup, but once we announced your capture they broke off. Right now they’re tailing us. I’m supposed to give them the word, then they’ll swoop in, free you, and crush this rebellion. Good plan, right?”
“Yeah, it’s a real work of art.” Steven put a hand on Johnathan’s shoulder. Build trust before you give the crazy order. Though Johnathan might jump into a volcano if he gave the word. “But it’s not going to happen. I need you to tell them to hang back. Find a mountain pass far enough away that there’s no way any of the scouts here will stumble onto them.”
“And then what?”
“That’s it for now. They need to be out of the way. Let this rebellion do its work for a bit, see what happens.” Steven sat with the stake hidden behind his crossed legs. The less chained to the ground he looked, the better.
But one way or another, Johnathan’s world had just shifted: he’d expected to be the hero, rescuing the president and bringing the cavalry swooping down on the rebels. He had wanted set fire to the tents he’d lived in for so long, and known that he’d breathed it into being. But after a second, Johnathan nodded and said, “Okay. No doubt. Why?”
“Don’t worry about why. That’s my job. Yours is to do.”
“What if they try to execute you?”
“They’re not going to.” Steven couldn’t tell him the truth, that he would rather be executed than crush this revolution. So when word came that the rebel leader would speak to Steven, he feared nothing.
#
After Arnold sent two of his people to fetch the president, he tried to prepare to meet the president. Former president, really. He was ousted from power, captured by a revolution. But still, he was nervous. Not because he feared Williams. In fact, Arnold intended to make the president beg for his life. He reviewed the list of intelligence he needed to get out of Williams: military base locations, counter-revolutionary plans, spies within his ranks, and repeated to himself, “strong, assured, strong, assured.”
Charlotte would know how to handle this. Juan would shoot him in the head. Ever since the two of them had vanished, Arnold had pushed forward on his own. To compensate, he tried to create a fictional Charlotte and Juan to speak to, but they just parroted his own ideas back to him. So he did the best he could on his own, and hoped victory would sort out any ideological details that Charlotte would have helped him with along the way. Honoring Juan would be easy enough, once they encountered enough enemies to engage in mass slaughter.
They brought Steven into the tent with one arm around each of his elbows. They staked his chains to the ground, per Arnold’s instructions, and left the room. Arnold paced around Williams. This was the man who had destroyed everything. Countless victims, dead on his word. The president didn’t try to keep an eye on Arnold, to his surprise. He smirked as soon as Arnold completed his first orbit. “I hate how modern revolutions look, don’t you? There used to be some glamor in it, a sense of importance. Now it just looks like camping. What a shame.”
“Shut up.” Arnold stared at the president’s face. Unimpressive, up close. They tried to make him look young and solid with the TV lighting, but his cheeks drooped a bit and his eyes looked like they were a foot further back than the rest of his head. “I need to know why I shouldn’t kill you right now.”
“You probably should.” Williams shifted from a kneel to sitting on the ground. “I’d do it if I were you. It’d be a big symbolic victory. You’d get some people rallying to you once it’s clear that it’s a real war. Putting my head on a pike will definitely tell people that the result is up in the air.”“Are you playing some game right now? I could shoot you in the head.” Arnold leaned close to the president as he said it. Intimidation, the goal. Without his agents and his military, the president was just another scared white man like all the rest.
But Williams laughed. “Do it. Blow my brains out. It’s a good idea.”
“Maybe I will,” Arnold said. Williams was bluffing. It made sense, no one manages to get the entire country under his thumb without mastering some kind of subterfuge. The casual smile, the sincerity Williams exuded as he recommended his own death, obvious tricks. Under no circumstances would Arnold believe that he’d captured a suicidal president. “First, I need some information.”
“Happy to help.” Williams smiled, and the veins behind Arnold’s eyes nearly popped. He pressed his handgun to Williams’s forehead.
“This is not a fucking joke. Where are my comrades? Charlotte Corday. Juan Aboytes. I know you have them.”
“Juan, Juan. Hm, no idea on that one. Never heard of him. Charlotte, though, I know about her.” Cross-eyed looking at the gun, Williams smiled even as Arnold pressed the muzzle harder into his skin.
“And?”
“Dead. Brutal torture from my number two, who only did it to get to me. It worked fairly well, be happy you couldn’t see the pictures.”
“Get at you? That doesn’t make sense.”
“Of course, you don’t know.” Williams spoke faster, seemingly excited to share information with Arnold. “Charlotte was my girlfriend back when I was in the anarchist cell. By the way, Ashwin Shethi. Does that name mean anything to you?”
“Don’t you dare lie about her.” A twitch from Arnold’s trigger finger. He almost pulled it.
“Oh, I’m not. It’s a whole complicated story, but she’s my ex. That’s true. I could’ve been a more thoughtful ex-boyfriend, even once I switched sides. I made her watch me kill my brother.” Williams looked off to the side, away from the gun. “But she could have turned off the video. That one might be on her. But she certainly died because she was connected to me. Maybe because I was sending her funds for the revolution.”
Flipping the gun around in his hand, Arnold whipped the president in the side of the face. He went down to the dirt, finally quiet. Shooting him in the head would feel good, and might even work out the way Williams said it would. Arnold tried to imagine the near future after doing it. But no, the gravity of the situation, the significance of such an execution required more ceremony.
Williams writhed on the ground, both hands clutched to the side of his face. So whatever the source of his strange invulnerability to fear did not extend to pain. Arnold pulled him back upright. “We’re going to try this again. I’m going to ask you questions. You will answer ‘yes’ or ‘no’ and you will only explain further when I tell you to. If you explain when I don’t want you to, I’ll break one of your fingers. Agreed?”
Shuddering as he took a breath, the president nodded. His eyes looked distant now, instead of active and darting all around.
Arnold took a deep breath. That jabbering version of the president had knocked him off-center. Now, he could extract the information at the pace he wanted. Crouching in the dust, eye-to-eye with the president, he said, “You said you funded our revolution through Charlotte. Is that true, or were you playing a game?”
Williams blinked at him a couple times.
“Shit. Alright. Is that true?”
“Yes.”
“Explain. No going off-topic.” Arnold held up a finger.
“Of course. I funded the revolution because Charlotte blackmailed me with the video of me killing my brother. I thought it would be fine, but I overestimated my power. So I sent her the money, and figured I’d be able to take down your revolution and it would all work out great. I’m beginning to doubt that.” It sounded different, to Arnold, than everything he’d said before. Earlier, each sentence had dropped off of him like a great weight, whereas now he sounded practiced.
“And that’s all true.”
“Yes.”
It confirmed earlier suspicions that Arnold had about their money. But why would Charlotte tell him it was for the revolution? She could have blackmailed him and said it was for anything. It was reckless of her to let him know there was any revolution at all. Williams had to be lying. Arnold looked him in the eye, and gripped his hand in his own two. Sweaty, trembling. Even though Williams tried to hide it, Arnold could see in the twitch of his eyelids that Williams knew what was about to happen. The crack was louder than Arnold expected. The president’s scream was not. Keeping his grip on the hand, Arnold said, “I need honesty from you. You see, I can tell when you’re lying. Would you like to try again?” He pointed the president’s own hand at him.
Breathing like he just sprinted a hundred meters, Williams said, “You’re not going to believe the truth. No one would. But it’s real.”
“Try me.”
Williams rolled his head around, licked his lips. Was he nervous, or was he performing?
“I faked my whole career. Never believed a word of it. I wanted to the revolution, but it kept not happening. So I did this. I made it all worse. Charlotte knew. She hated it. She hated it so much. We broke up, I went and did it. Sam killed her trying to get information about me. That’s the truth. Honest.”
Arnold smiled. “Honest.” Another crack, another scream. He kicked Williams onto the ground, where the president cradled his mangled hand. “I want you to know what’s going to happen to you. You are going to die. I’m going to kill you. But I’m going to do it on the White House lawn where the whole world can watch you bleed.”
He poked his head out of the tent. “You two, take him back to his tent. He’s useless.”